Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Connar backed up a step, then another. He wasn’t certain Noddy would hold Neit’s attention long (he wasn’t certain he could) but he wasn’t going to stay and find out.

  He followed the others through the archway to the stairs. When they reached the first landing, he backed down and darted through the inner door.

  He was free. He ran back to the academy through the balmy night air. The lower school was dark, silhouettes briefly blocking the stars low on the western horizon: boy sentries patrolling the far wall. Connar knew from experience they were half asleep. As long as no noise broke the usual night sounds, you could lock your body into a thoughtless shuffle-trudge, your mind slipping into dreams, until the welcome relief let you stumble back to your bunk for what felt like a few heartbeats of sleep.

  Light still glowed in the senior barracks windows. Half the boys were still awake. Connar faked a huge yawn as he walked in. By the light of a single candle, Lefty Poseid, Rooster Holdan, and Vandas Noth sat on a bunk playing cards’n’shards, with a focus that meant at least one of them was trying to win his way out of a hated assignment—most likely midnight watch sentry duty.

  Across from them, Ghost lay on his stomach, his hair bleached to white in the candlelight. He marked his place in a grubby, limp-looking scroll, then looked down again.

  Vandas threw down his cards, then made the sign for Noddy.

  “Still castle-side,” Connar muttered in the undervoice they all habitually used when others were asleep, though they learned early to fall asleep whatever was going on. He faked another yawn, got ready for bed, and lay with his eyes closed, reviewing the map until images began to slip sideways into dreams.

  Jolt. His eyes opened to moonlight streaming in. He had slept! Judging by how far the moon had jumped, morning wasn’t all that far off, and he still had no sure plans! What was the use of the inside line of communication if he didn’t use it?

  He slid out of bed, pulled his clothes on, and eased out into the courtyard, where he hunted up tiny pebbles, and laid them on the stone ground in an approximation of the map.

  Right. Right. If he had, say, three teams, one to shadow the enemy—no, better for them to lie in wait, depending on which set of rune-clues he was given....

  He was still sitting there when footsteps approached. He looked up into the blue light of impending dawn as a big, broad-shouldered silhouette appeared. Connar recognized Noddy, though he sensed a difference in his walk, the swing of his hands.

  Connar abruptly remembered his stone map. He suppressed the instinct to strike his stones away: that would be suspicious even to Noddy. No one would know what they meant.

  “Connar? What are you doing out here?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Headache,” Connar said. “So I was reviewing our loss on the Thirdday overnight.” Then, belatedly, “All night?”

  Noddy’s bashful grin and dropped head made it plain what had happened. Connar watched Noddy go on into the barracks to hunt up fresh clothes. Noddy! Neither of them had ever expected he’d be the first to make it with a girl outside of the Singing Sword.

  Connar was aware of a vague sense of ill-use. Why did that tall, tight runner pick him? He scowled down at his hands, annoyed with himself for that stupid pulse of jealousy. Sex was great, then it was over. He had more important things to think about right now.

  By the time they went to breakfast, he had the beginnings of four plans, and when the headmaster summoned the upper school, divided them, and handed off the first coded clues to Noth and Connar, his mind simmered with expectation.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Infiltrations were not actually overnights in the sense of camping out, since they were located in the academy, the castle, and perhaps portions of the city, but they were called overnights as shorthand for two-day assignments.

  When Connar’s infiltration riding reached the winter barn “enemy HQ” just as the evening watch clanged, defended by Gannan, Noddy, and the biggest boys in the upper two classes, they erupted into wild yips and dancing about.

  “One day! We did it in one day!” The senior class executed a gloat—well deserved, Rat’s defeated team had to admit. They were still working on their second scrap of code.

  Connar pelted up in time to see Gannan execute two handsprings and a backflip. Cabbage Gannan! Connar hadn’t thought that barrel body of Gannan’s could manage a somersault.

  They started back toward the senior barracks, met by the two deflection teams. Connar gazed at his capering command in the white heat of euphoria.

  This is what Inda lived for, he thought as the two teams gathered around him, yipping shrilly and yelling wild words of congratulation. This was how Inda felt after taking the Venn commander’s surrender, there on the cliff commemorated forever in that tapestry in the interview chamber. There could not be any joy greater.

  They swept off to the mess hall, jubilation ringing off the walls, as the younger boys trailed in more slowly, word of the seniors’ win passing back through the ranks.

  Tevaca didn’t think anything of it until he chanced to be in line four or five down from the famous Rat Noth, who said to tall, auburn-haired Stick Tyavayir (another admired hero), “I don’t know how Olavayir Tvei did it. We’d just figured out the second note.”

  Tevaca felt the words rising, But he saw the map. Of course he knew. Then it hit him, what that meant.

  For the second time in two days his appetite vanished. No, not possible. The big boys didn’t cheat. They just didn’t. For one thing, they knew what would happen to them if they did. There hadn’t been any public canings for some years, but everybody had heard the history of the last one by the end of their first week at the academy. Anything with that much blood was sure to be passed down exhaustively, to the last sanguinary detail, to equally eagerly horrified listeners.

  Tevaca looked around—and met Faldred’s wide eyes.

  “What do we do?” Tevaca whispered when Faldred caught up to him, his tray piled. No diminished appetite for him, Tevaca noticed sourly. But then he hadn’t been up in the headmaster’s loft on the sneak.

  Faldred’s averted gaze and his jerky shrug shot alarm through Tevaca. “You didn’t snitch,” he muttered in a dire undertone.

  Faldred looked affronted. “I would never snitch, even if they set me on fire and pulled out my eyes.” His gaze shifted, and he muttered in a less assured tone, “I only told Eveneth, and he said he wouldn’t blab. Come on, Tevaca, you know it was too good to sit on, and besides, I didn’t drag your name into it. I just said somebody.”

  Eveneth—a year older, practically fourteen. He’d know how to keep his lips sealed.

  Tevaca’s appetite returned with the same speed it had vanished...the last comfortable meal he was to have for several days. From cousins to connections, the gossip that Olavayir Tvei had been seen in the headmaster’s office the day before the game made its way up the school.

  By noon the following day Tevaca was beginning to learn the truth about secrets; at that same meal, as whispers hissed in a wildfire susurrus through the mess hall, Connar intercepted some long looks from much younger boys, difficult to interpret, except that they were materially different from the admiration of the night before.

  One of the younger masters, expert in cutting out yapping pups, began following the rumor back and back: “Who told you?” “It was Horseapple Hend!” Horseapple: “My cousin!” “I got it from....” and so on, until he got to Faldred, who, when confronted by a scowling master tapping a yew wand in his hand, after trying “I don’t know,” gave up Tevaca. He tried to exculpate himself to a circle of stony-faced classmates when he returned from this encounter, assuring them that everybody swore they’d endure fire and flaying rather than blab, but when facing the reality of a cane in a strong master’s hand, of course anybody caved.

  At mess that evening, Tevaca was absent, which strengthened his barracks-mates in shunning Faldred for being a blabbermouth—to someone in another barracks, no less.

  At the other e
nd of the school, Connar was aware of a pool of silence spreading around him and Noddy, the latter blithely unaware, as usual. Connar acted as if nothing was amiss. Because nothing was. He’d done what any commander would do—that is, any commander determined to win.

  While he was thinking that, the headmaster sent a tearful Tevaca (summarily ejected from the elite squad of headmaster’s runners) to execution HQ, the boys’ sobriquet for the small, bare room at the other end of the headmaster’s building where miscreants awaited investigation and judgment.

  The headmaster sat alone, staring in horror at the chalkboard leaning there against his wall, still bearing the map he’d sketched out to show the upper school Firstday morning.

  He opened his door to send a runner to Commander Noth, shook his head, and decided it was better to go himself. He shut the door and even turned the old key in the lock, something he’d done maybe twice since his appointment.

  Even now he couldn’t define why he did it. He thought about what to say all the way up to the garrison captains’ wing, where the duty runner, Fish, was dispatched to find Noth.

  Fish, expert at winnowing out all the academy gossip, stopped by the quartermaster’s to pass the news to his father, then went to locate the commander.

  Soon Andaun, a balding, conscientious man who had memorized the Gand manual, faced Commander Noth, each seeing their own emotion in the other’s eyes.

  Andaun said, “I realize that under the rules, Olavayir Tvei is Olavayir Tvei while on academy-side, but we all know how much that truly means.”

  “You haven’t asked the prince,” Noth said—not quite a question, since Andaun had said as much in his summary.

  “Just Tevaca. Exhaustively. I’m convinced he didn’t make it up. Though he backtracked and rambled and second-guessed himself, two things are consistent: that he saw Connar in my office on Restday, and that Connar spent some time before the game map.”

  Silence, as a fly buzzed against the window, then Noth hit his knees with his hands. “The king,” he said, “is going to be furious.”

  Andaun sighed. “He has to be told, of course. Before I talk to Connar or after? Or should he be here?”

  Noth tapped his fingers gently on a battered side table, the old call to arms drum tattoo. Finally he said, “It’s never going to stay in the academy. So trying to keep it within is a fool’s game. Why don’t you bring Connar here? We’ll question him, and whether he confesses or denies, we’ll all go to the king.”

  Andaun got to his feet, then sank down again on the worn wooden bench that had been in that room since Inda-Harskialdna’s day. His voice was husky with dread. “What if Connar denies it?”

  They couldn’t answer that—and in any case, they didn’t have to. A runner was sent (not Fish, to his disgust, though he lurked within call as long as he could) to fetch Connar. By then it was quite late, though back in the academy, the senior barracks was lit. As soon as Connar left with the runner, the seniors burst out talking, while Noddy looked from one to the other, totally bewildered.

  Connar appeared at Noth’s door, blue eyes wide and bright in his beautiful face. He saluted, was summoned within, and Noth said without preamble, “Were you in the Headmaster’s office before the Firstday assignment?”

  Connar had figured out that he’d been seen somewhere along his path. It was the only explanation for the weird looks and silences. All during the walk from academy to garrison-side, he thought out what to say, and so, with a passionate conviction that silenced both elders, he outlined his reasoning, all the way to Inda-Harskialdna on the cliff.

  At the end of that long speech, Andaun said, “Do you understand that you broke several rules?”

  Connar knew it to the knots in his stomach, but (so he reasoned) he would feel exactly the same if caught by the enemy. “Does the enemy have rules?”

  Noth said wryly, “So Headmaster Andaun is your enemy?”

  Connar threw his head back, a magnificent gesture. Unconscious of the effect it had on two men who ordinarily weren’t inclined toward their own gender, he said, “I knew I was going to command. I knew I had to win. When you have a war, you get any information you can, however you can, in order to be effective. Inda-Harskialdna said that the purpose of our training is to deliver victory by the fastest way that preserves lives and material.”

  Straight, Noth and Andaun were both thinking, out of the Gand manual.

  Noth sent a look at Andaun: It was time to fetch the king. And the queen as well.

  Not that you ever fetch a king, of course.

  “Wait here,” he said to Connar, as Andaun crossed his arms, looking out the window and wishing he was anywhere else.

  On the long walk up to the royal residence, he mentally composed his report. Hoping strongly that he was early enough to catch Arrow before he went off to one or another of his favorites, he stopped long enough to send a fast young runner to apprise Connar’s parents that he was coming.

  When he arrived at the king’s suite, the royal parents were waiting, standing side by side.

  “What’s going on?” Arrow asked.

  Noth expertly assessed the king’s sobriety. He’d been drinking, but it hadn’t reached his eyes yet. Good.

  He saluted, to establish the seriousness of the situation, and gave his report.

  At the end, Arrow uttered a laugh. “Damn! Connar is a clever little shit—he’s not wrong.”

  Danet was not smiling. “He’s very wrong.”

  Arrow snapped, “What?”

  Danet rubbed her eyes. “Is this our fault? Don’t you see it, there’s no sense of wrong, or right?”

  A thought occurred to Arrow, Just like Lanrid, right was what he pointed at, but he didn’t say it. He knew how much Danet would hate it. “Connar’s young, and thinking like a youngster. He wants to win, and he’s beginning to think about strategy.” He started pacing, as he always did when his gut began to churn.

  Danet said, “Is that what you call it?”

  Arrow whirled. “Are you saying you want to see him caned a hundred times in front of the entire academy? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you go on about rules. He’s not wrong about what a commander would do in a war situation—and half the school is going to say that. Not just me. We’re training future captains there.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “My captains. Noddy’s future captains. Whose purpose is to protect the kingdom.”

  Danet’s arms crossed tightly over her chest. “I do not want to see him caned. I do not want to see anyone caned. Or even hear of it. I told you once how stupid I think such viciousness is, and I listened to all the talk about honor. And I understand that ‘honor’ is really some sort of invisible boundary that’s supposed to rein men in from loosing Norsundrian brutality. That means war has to have rules or it never ends. And you all agreed to this rule.”

  Her voice trembled. She stopped, pressed her fingers against her lips, and shook her head. “This is something you will have to solve yourselves.”

  She turned to go, and Arrow, feeling that he’d just been dumped with an impossible choice, rapped out fiercely, “What’re you going to say if your girls try something similar?”

  She stopped at the door, and looked back, her face ravaged. “If any girl tries something similar,” she whispered, “I’ll send them all home.”

  Arrow wanted to follow and yell that she was not only unfair but no help, but he knew that ranting at Danet was not going to solve this mess. He couldn’t make her decide, much as he wanted to.

  So he nailed Noth with a narrow glare. “What do you think?”

  Noth said slowly, as calmly as he could, “My understanding is that all those boys know the rules, and they know the consequences.”

  Arrow dug his palm heels into his eyes. “Oh, damnation. It wasn’t a small cheat, an easy one. The headmaster’s office. That’s like the cheat of all cheats. And if I overlook it because Connar’s our boy, we’ll never be able to talk about honor again, and have them take us serio
usly. How I hate that word, honor. Sometimes I don’t even know what it means.”

  Noth said gently, “Then think of it as trust.”

  When Andaun got back to the academy, it was to discover that a fight had broken out in the senior barracks. By the midnight bell, which reverberated through his aching head, he’d gotten to the bottom of that mess, which began with Gannan saying that even if it was true and Olavayir Tvei cheated—and he wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was true—nothing would happen because he’d weasel out of it by crying to the king.

  And Noddy hit him.

  Gannan launched himself at Noddy, several others got in the way of the big boys’ powerful fists in trying to stop them, causing a generality of black eyes, cauliflower ears, bruises and contusions.

  The senior barracks was put in lockdown (which meant a master had to spend the night with them, something that usually only scrubs got when out of hand), and Noddy, as first offender, found himself at execution HQ with his brother, Tevaca having been sent back to his barracks to await sentence for being out of bounds.

  Of course Noddy told Connar everything that had happened. When he got to Gannan’s remark, implying that Connar was a weasel—a level of cowardice even lower than a rabbit—Connar’s anger at himself for being caught, at Andaun, Noth, and his father for all the blab about rules instead of understanding that winning commanders did whatever necessary, ignited into fury.

  By the time the sentence was executed, the day before the entire academy was to take off for the week-long game (Rat Noth now the commander facing Ghost Fath), Connar saw himself as the betrayed warrior among the enemy, going to execution, and determined to die well.

  And that’s what the entire academy saw. Connar walked out alone, wearing only a shirt, trousers, and boots, and waited, head high, for his hands to be affixed to the crosspiece on the post—which held him up when his feet no longer could.

  It was Noddy who broke first, sobbing when the first blood appeared on the white shirt. It was so loud a sound, as shocking as the crack of yew across flesh. By then several small boys were sobbing as well, and two fainted. Others watched with sickened thrill, as did many older boys, but no one moved or spoke: Fear underlay all other emotions. One false step and you could be up there, too.