“I don’t know.” Hliss’s gaze shifted again, and Danet strongly suspected that her sister knew a lot more than she was saying. “Listen, Danet, the important thing is, you’re aware now. What are you going to do? Tell Arrow?”
Danet compressed her lips.
Hliss said coaxingly, “Please, Danet, write to Calamity before you do anything. Tell her I was irresponsible—blame me.”
So many questions arose that Danet couldn’t follow any of them. She walked out, and circled around the kitchen garden as the bell began to ring. She was so deep in thought she didn’t even see Gannan, who had straightened up wearily as he finished his last weed. He startled in horror as none other than the gunvaer tramped toward him, scowling.
To him that scowl meant one thing: Connar had snitched! He stiffened, readying to be hauled off to a flogging in the parade ground. Maybe even executed! Excuses streamed through his mind, and he barely kept himself from gibbering until she marched on by without giving him a second glance, leaving him limp and sweaty with relief.
He waited until she was well ahead, then cautiously followed, not breathing easily until she turned to the left toward the residence. He kept going straight toward the north end of the academy, where its stables abutted on the garrison stable yard.
He checked when he spotted the runner-in-training, leaning against a hitching post. He straightened up. “Gannan.”
“Fish,” Gannan said warily.
Fish (born David Pereth, but renamed by his elder brother when he first glimpsed his goggle-eyed newborn brother), a scrawny urchin with a face dominated by those pale, protuberant eyes, was often seen around the castle grounds as well as the garrison. He was well-known as a snitch. His big brother Halrid led the garrison boys whose fathers weren’t captains, the important distinction being that the general run of garrison boys were no longer invited to the academy, unless they showed some exceptional talent. Only captains’ sons, now that the king had achieved the numbers from the jarl and Rider families that he wanted. The result was a complicated relationship between garrison and academy youngsters.
“I happened to be running a message on the wall,” Fish said—too casually, offering an excuse Gannan hadn’t asked for. “I saw the princes rousting you. Or did you roust them?”
Now that the gunvaer was safely out of sight, Gannan’s triumph reignited. “I told them what you said about Snot not being a real prince. You should have seen his face!” Gannan crowed. “Red as fire.”
Snot was Gannan’s nickname for Connar. He used it as often as he could, but somehow neither it nor Rockhead for the older prince caught on.
Fish laughed along with Gannan, then, “What did he say?”
“Nothing,” Gannan gloated. “Said I was stupid and ran off.”
They parted, and Fish lingered until Gannan had vanished beyond the academy wall. He ducked through byways until he found his elder brother finishing the cleaning of horse tack. He sidled up. “You know that thing I told Gannan, about the pr—”
Halrid smacked his hand over his brother’s face. “Shut up, blabbermouth,” he muttered. “Do you want everybody hearing?”
Fish decided against retorting, “Why not?” His brother could be a little too quick with his fists when annoyed.
Halrid dragged him to a corner of the barn. “What did he say? Him, not Gannan.”
“Nothing, Gannan says.”
Disappointed of a juicy story, Halrid shrugged. “Keep it to yourself.” He waved his hand, and his brother scampered off.
When the mess bell rang, and their father got off duty, Halrid reported what had happened. “Good,” Pa said under his breath. “Maybe he’ll take the bait.”
Bait? Which he? Halrid wasn’t certain what the point was—or the plan—but he knew from his father’s tone that he’d best keep quiet.
Pa gave him a narrow look. “Say nothing more. To anyone.”
“I know, I know,” Halrid whispered, hoping to ward off a lecture. Every time Pa got together with Uncle Retren, he acted the same. It probably had something to do with that slaughter up north, where Uncle Ret lost his eye, and half of a leg.
Pa waved a hand in dismissal, and Halrid ran off, disgusted. It would have been a lot more fun if the academy boys, who (in the garrison boys’ collective opinion) were all prigs about their rank, had gotten into a royal scrap on Restday, bringing down heavy retribution.
Oh well.
FIVE
By the time Danet reached her room again, she simmered with righteous anger.
She flung herself down on her cushion, glanced at the letter she had been struggling over, and swept it off her desk. Her fingers trembled as she pulled a fresh paper in its place. She flicked the lid off the ink, shook a couple drops of water into it, and impatiently mixed it with the ink stick. Then dipped the quill—and halted.
She had always addressed her letters to Calamity, which was a nickname, a friendship name. Now she wondered what sort of friendship it was when one party sneaked behind the other party’s back, no doubt laughing with their entire clan.
Danet threw the quill away, infuriated afresh as ink splattered all over her desk. The urge to write formally seized her, but she wasn’t certain she even remembered Calamity’s given name outside of her connection with one of the three Noth clans.
Maybe she ought to send a royal runner with a formal spoken message.
To say...what?
She got up again and wandered to the window, hands gripping her elbows. The burning desire to get a letter written and dispatched before the family gathered for Restday wine and bread had begun to cool as she considered what exactly to say. To do.
The first setback was law. Angry as she was, she could not call to mind any actual law that had been broken.
She and Arrow had both sworn, not just before the jarls in the Convocations since their coronation, but to each other, to stick to the laws. They were not going to be like Mathren Olavayir, or worse, the long-dead Sierlaef, elder brother to the famous Evred, who in regarding himself above law and tradition had made himself so hated that several generations later, people still didn’t refer to Noddy as “the Sierlaef.” He was Olavayir Ain at the academy, Noddy in the family, or in formal situations outside the academy, people would use his full title, Nadran-Sierlaef, as if to distinguish him from that Montreivayir prince dead a century and a half ago.
There wasn’t even an academy rule. She knew the history of the academy, and all its rules. Arrow had talked about little else (except guarding the borders) those first few years, prompting her to read everything in sheer self-defense. This situation, as far as she was aware, was new: no one had disguised a boy as a girl to keep him out of the academy.
The opposite—girls disguised as boys—had happened three times, according to official records. Two were sisters close to brothers, one a twin who refused to be separated from her brother, and both were summarily sent home. The third had been murkier in motivation, something having to do with a Rider family connected to the Jayad Heseas hiding a problematical son by sending his sister instead. This girl had even managed to survive till summer, the year after Inda-Harskialdna returned to his homeland to become Adaluin. She’d excelled in everything, but when she returned the next spring she hadn’t been able to hide body changes, and back south she was sent, to re-emerge ten years later as the famed scourge of the brigands always infesting the mountains above the pass to the Sartoran Sea.
Danet remembered wondering why, if a girl wanted to be there and her skills were equivalent, she shouldn’t be there. Just because she had a basket below the waist instead of a pickle-and-plums didn’t seem relevant to much of anything. But in other moods, she thought the academy was a disaster waiting to happen and women were well out if it.
The point now: There was no law, or rule, to grant Danet the moral high ground. Which didn’t lessen this sense of betrayal a whit.
As Danet glared through a shimmer of hot tears at the dusty slate rooftops below, it struck her
how easy it would be to throw all her authority at the Senelaec family...who were not going to attack the capital. Or even their loathed neighbors, the Marlovayirs.
Their back of the hand was directly solely at her. Well, no, not exactly. If Hliss was right, the back of the hand was directed at Arrow....
A tap at the door, and a runner poked her head in. “Commander Noth is here, Danet-Gunvaer.”
Not trusting her voice, Danet waved permission. Jarid Noth entered, broad of shoulder and chest, his shaggy salt-and-pepper horsetail swinging at his martial step, his craggy face breaking into a tender smile that she on their first meeting would have thought utterly foreign to him.
She still didn’t know quite how it had happened, how over ten years interest had turned into friendship, and then one winter night into something warmer, until he rooted as strongly into her heart as her children.
His smile faded, and his eyes narrowed. “Danet?”
The sound of her name on his lips warmed her down to her toes. The urge to confide in him was so strong. Her throat worked as words shaped her lips, but she resolutely killed the impulse.
It was that last thought, about Arrow. The Senelaecs’ back of the hand might have included her when she arranged the betrothals, but it had begun with Arrow and his academy and army. She knew Arrow. His temper was like tinder, especially about the academy, his chief pride. It would be so easy to point his finger and launch, say, Commander Noth, northward, to attack....
And Jarid would have to do it. Or be foresworn. All because Calamity had put her boy in braids.
What you wish, what you want, now matters, Hesar whispered in memory. Danet understood it now, what the old gunvaer had meant. As a someday-randviar, Danet could laugh and gossip and nothing would come of it. She had lost that luxury the night she handed Arrow those swords before the throne.
Chill crawled up the back of Danet’s neck. She launched herself into Noth’s arms, and hid her face on his shoulder so he wouldn’t see anything of her thoughts.
“Danet, what happened?”
“Nothing,” she muttered.
“That expression on your face isn’t nothing,” he murmured into her neck.
“I have a problem, but it’s something I need to work out on my own,” she said, locking her fingers together behind his broad back.
They kissed, and then both heard the pounding of footsteps that could only be youth running in the simmering heat.
“Your young are here,” he said with his twisted grin. “Which means the bell is about to ring for Restday Drum. I’d best get back down to the garrison. See you later.”
As commander, of course he had to preside over the guard-side Restday ritual. He smiled as the door burst open and her three children raced in, coltish in their lengthening limbs, Noddy’s hands and feet seeming larger every day. Bun danced right past with only a smile over her shoulder, but the boys, used to academy protocol, touched three fingers to their chests in salute. Noth dipped his chin at them, then exited and vanished down the hall.
The bell rang a short time later. While the children clamored at Danet, talking over one another, Arrow finally entered, rubbing his hands, and the children fell silent. “Noth and I finished setting up the Great Game. Everyone thinks a big storm is coming, so we’ll camp out at Gold Hill so we don’t get flooded. But right after the bell rang, I thought of three questions.” To Danet, “Is he coming back later?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Tell him to bang on my door first, will you?” He turned to face the children. “What have you been doing all day?”
Bun said, “I was just telling Mother, or trying to, but Connar was yelling over me—”
“Bunny, you were just as loud,” Danet chided.
“Go one at a time,” Arrow said. “Youngest first. Bun?”
“I was down at the stable with some of the first-year feet, and we got to braid manes!”
“No wonder you smell of horse, Bun,” Noddy said mildly.
Danet felt Arrow’s gaze on her, and she wondered what her expression was like. She turned a mock frown on her daughter as she sniffed. “Phew! Stink is more like it. Bun, this is Restday.”
“It’s too hot for House tunics, and mine is too tight,” she whimpered.
“At least go wash and put on a clean smock. Quick.”
Danet turned to the boys, mostly to get her back to Arrow, then chill gripped her neck again when she saw Connar’s expression. She was thrown back to the rumor that had sent her down to Hliss in the first place. Connar’s eyes seemed bluer, somehow, when he was upset, the fine bones barely emerging in his face subtly enhanced.
On impulse, Danet said, “Noddy, will you go make certain Bun doesn’t wave her fingers over her water pitcher and consider herself clean?”
“All right.”
As soon as he was gone, Danet put her back to the door, and said to Connar, “If you’re still worried about that foolish gossip, you can ask your father directly.”
Arrow was heading toward the room where they usually gathered for Restday. At this, he swung around. “What’s this about?”
Connar looked down, his long lashes hiding his eyes. “It’s all right. I know it’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing?” Arrow said.
Danet watched Arrow. “Someone told Connar that Hliss’s child, if a boy, would replace him.”
Arrow’s face reddened. “What shit-brain said that?” he demanded, too loud for the room. And when Connar hesitated, Arrow waved a hand. “Never mind, never mind, I know the world will end if you snitch. Connar, your Aunt Hliss would have plenty to say about that. You can go ask her, if you’re worried.”
Yes. Too loud, too forceful. He’s been thinking it, Danet realized, and wondered how many times she could be shocked on such a hot day.
But Connar’s face cleared, the other two reappeared—Bun’s sweet round face shining with vigorous scrubbing—and Noddy and Connar finished talking about some game they’d been playing. Danet didn’t realize she hadn’t heard a single word until the boys brought out their drums.
Danet forced her thoughts to focus, and she and Arrow picked up bread and wine to begin the ritual.
Ordinarily Danet cherished this time with her family. During the academy season, she never saw the boys except for this one time a week, and of late Bun, who used to be her little shadow, had taken up more and more with her agemates among the younger runners, the kitchen help, the weavers, and especially in the stable, when she wasn’t in lessons.
It was quite warm, and she trusted the children to want to launch out the moment they were done. As happened.
As the door banged behind them, Arrow scowled her way, and said before she could open her mouth, “Is that why you’ve been glaring ever since I walked in, because some brat’s been farting rumors?”
Danet drew a breath, making sure her voice was even. “Arrow. I heard your tone. Don’t deny you haven’t thought it.”
“It’s just thought. Who wouldn’t?” He threw his arms wide. “I can’t help it! You were there when Mathren attacked Evred, and tried to kill us. I mean, you weren’t in the room, but, shit, you know what I mean. After which, we found out he’d done for not only the previous king and queen, but his own wife!”
“But Mathren is dead.”
Arrow turned away, his hands stiff, then turned back. “Hliss’s baby will be named Farendavan, which makes him not a target, see? That’s my thinking. So if the worst happens, and someone gets to Noddy, well—”
“Noddy and Connar.”
“—we’d be able to adopt him into Olavayir...and, what?”
“Them. We have two boys.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You said Noddy.”
“Him, them, you know what I mean.” Arrow made an impatient gesture, but he didn’t meet Danet’s eyes.
She said, “We are Connar’s family in all the ways that count. He calls us Ma and Da. He and Noddy are close, not at all like you and Lanr
id.”
“I know, I know,” Arrow said, swinging around again. “They’re both loyal to each other.” He flashed a grin. “Noddy might not have Connar’s looks, but he’s got my brother’s strength, and some of your brains. Connar will be his commander.”
“And Hliss tried for a girl,” Danet reminded him.
Noise outside brought their attention to the door. A runner tapped, then announced that Commander Noth was there.
Arrow rubbed his hands. “Let me have him for two words, then he’s yours.” And he shot out the door, leaving Danet to wrestle with her roiling emotions.
SIX
Whenever he could, Arrow rode out into the plains to watch the all-academy Great Game for at least part of the stay. They always left a day or so before Andahi Day, so he wouldn’t have to hear the women singing.
He’d tried forbidding the Lament altogether, insisting that the Idegans of Andahi, in slaughtering Lanrid and his Riders in the Pass, had tainted it forever. Most had obeyed, sufficiently disturbed by the reports that had trickled outward after the slaughter.
However, the older women had reacted to his decree with stubborn indifference. Every one of them had vivid memories of their own elderly relatives who’d lost mothers, aunts, sisters, and cousins up at Andahi. What could he do against those obstinate old toughs?
He’d discovered that their thin, high voices haunted him worse than the entire castle singing. Somehow—he had no idea why—their voices always caused him to dream of Sinna’s beautiful singing of the Lament. No, not dream. Those voices caused nightmares in which he found himself in the middle of a battle he was supposed to command, and he had no idea where anyone was, or even who the enemy might be. And when he tried to move, it was like running through water, with that haunting, heart-ripping voice echoing through.
Time of Daughters I Page 33