Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

Though he had not done so at Marron’s, at the sweetshop Sorchone paid for their delicacies with one of the Kingscroft bursar’s bronze coins. The proprietress squinted at it, not suspiciously, but rather as if she expected it to explode in her hand.

“Is thar going tah be a tax, soor?” she demanded, in accents that struggled for a melody of refinement.

“Sooner or later, will there not?” he replied smoothly. “We—”

“Harr! Students!” bellowed the voice of some gargling bear who, from the tone of his epithet, might be a ‘student-catcher’ the way some hungrier fellows were ‘rat-catchers.’ Rothesay spun about.

A storm of a man bore down upon them. Gaudily clad in violent Geillan checks bound with no fewer than three Sferan sashes, he whomped over the cobbles towards them in huge black boots of alien fashion. A matched pair of swords, short and long, swinging over his right hip, and a necklace of throwing daggers were at best only probable emblems of Runedaur affiliation. Far more certain was the severed head swinging by its own long dark hair from his belt and clearing a very wide path through the crowd for him. Men blanched, women gasped and veiled their faces. But though their servants shrieked and yammered, the Andrastiri elite recovered their masks of aplomb swiftly, and instead served up their coldest disdain for this unspeakable display of vulgarity.

The man grinned, minus a few teeth, beneath braided brown moustaches, as he strode up to the students. “Hey! None o’ my lot with yer—yer got summat agin Waterspooks? Eh?”

“Oh, no,” Lacie retorted briskly, and shrugged one shoulder prettily, “but they were all drunk!”

The strange knight laughed. “An’ were they, then? Who drunk ’em? You, eh?”

As Lacie started, confused, Sorchone nodded at the dangling head. “Who’s that?”

Rothesay, battling for composure herself, fought not to flinch away as the stranger swept the grim trophy up for display, bringing with it a reek, unexpectedly of tannin. But she caught the knight’s swift glance at the bronze token still pinched in the fingers of the sweetshop-mistress, who stood frozen, caught between a desperate impulse to revulsion and a commercial instinct never to offend anyone who could put a coin in her till.

“Some counterfeiter,” the knight said loudly, and let the head fall again. “Hey, city boy, put a couple o’ them in yer bag fer me.” He pointed a very brown, gnarly finger at a tray of honeycrusts. Sorchone returned the bag to the shopkeeper, who scooped in a large fistful for him and attempted a smile. The knight scanned her small store keenly. “Nice place,” he rumbled, and whomped out.

The students followed. Rothesay, glancing back, saw the sweetshop owner sink weakly onto a stool, as a sympathetic servant-girl pressed a small cup into her hands.

They followed him past the Black Well itself, a spring that filled an elegant fountain in a gazebo of sculpted black marble where the neighborhood drew its water; down stone stairs to the next street, rather shabbier than Blackwell, and down another ruder and rougher staircase, and another, down to the east end of the Hollycrown harbor itself, to Drinkers Lane and Drummers Inn.

Business was quiet at this hour; they took their beer on the deep porch overlooking the grubby street and the waterfront, where they were joined, silently but companionably, by the innkeeper.

“Torgald,” said the knight, by way of introducing himself, and pointed with his chin towards the nearer of the two sleek black ships at anchor a little way out. “Storm at Morning—sweetest bark on the water. Any of yer lot comin’ with, when we sail?”

Teo said she was thinking about it.

Torgald nodded. “Then you’d best meet m’ mate, here.” He raised the head again. Rothesay, soothed by the smell of salt in the air, found the stomach to look at the dreadful ornament. The thing had been tanned, evidently, and not left to rot, and the bottom of the neck had been sewn up neatly; the eyes, too, had been closed. Glancing up at Torgald, she was amazed to see his own eyes glitter as with unspent tears. “Colden,” he said. “My best friend. I hope he’s in hell, the stinkin’ devilspawn!”

“What did he do?” Lacie breathed, awed.

“Th’ viperspittle asked me to carry him around like this till Darkturning. His idea of a real belly laugh, see. O’ course, I knew that, din’t I, when I fell in with him? Allus one fer keepin’ up the image, Colden: he’d carry a couple o’ noggins about like this whenever he called in port. It was his fashion to behead a cove he’d had to kill, see; tanned ’em, o’ course, ’cos he drew the line at stinkin’ like a demon. ‘Lookin’ the part’s enough, Gally,’ he says to me, and—” he poked one of his twisted-root fingers at Rothesay’s ribs, “he allus made sure to smell right pretty fer the ladies. But he took an arrow bad last winter, in a bit of a dance we had with an Ilmatian pirate, off Seal Head, up Orothonia way.”

Rothesay’s jaw dropped. Orothonia—all the way out in the Great Ocean—marked the easternmost edge of the known world.

“Aye,” said Torgald, catching her amazement, and thrust out a foot in its enormous thick boot. “Hide o’ the black seal, these: I caught him meself, an’ had these made by one o’ they Orothonian tribeswomen, just as they make their ane. Nothin’ in the world better for keepin’ a paw warm—an’ dry,” he added, with almost religious passion in his gargling voice. “But, Colden: he figgers, after all the blokes he’s bounced around like this, it’s only his own just desserts, see? An’ me, now, carryin’ on ‘upholdin’ the image’ in his place. Bugger the pustule.” Torgald dived swiftly into his beer.

A respectful silence fell. Rothesay closed her eyes and tried to grasp this strange sense of friendship; she supposed it related somehow to Dav’s willingness to kill his dear friend Harlan Grey. Still, she thought, it is true that we all have to die someday, and what useful purpose could be served pretending otherwise? And if one had to die—she recalled Rory’s remarks just before the battle, about taking misery as it came, or building it up beforehand with fearful imaginings into something overwhelming, and still having to take the misery as well, anyway. This Colden fellow: he sounded as though he had decided he did not need to take the misery at all, not if he could make merry of it. But it seemed to be hard on Torgald.

After a moment, she ventured to tell him so: “It, er, doesn’t seem to be much of a laugh for you, sir.”

Torgald grinned. “Sure it is. There’s me thinkin’ o’ him—laughin’ his head off, yer might say! But I miss him, see? That’s all. Don’t you mind me gettin’ sob-faced, time to time. That’s just me gettin’ used to a world with no Colden in it, an’ I ain’t in a hurry.”

“But you called him ‘viperspittle’. . . .”

“Sure,” Torgald said gently. “You shoulda heard what he called me—when he could.”

The innkeeper stirred. “Ah remembers ’im: ‘bloody pox on a mangy dog’s anus’ ’uz one ’f his’n, aye?”

“Sounds like,” agreed Torgald. “An’ never th’ same one twice. Bit of an artist, that way.”

The innkeeper looked gravely at the head of Colden. “’S mighty inhospitable, tah bring a man under mah roof, an’ gi’ ’m no drink. Mother!” he called in through the doorway, “bring us a new ale, lass, aye?”

The ‘lass,’ as grey as the innkeeper, ambled out with another mug and a great jug. Her husband nodded gruffly at the head, now on the bench beside Torgald, and she set the mug beside it. Then she drew back, her eyes narrowed.

“Naow, reckon Ah’ve swatted that’n wi’ mah broom for th’ lahst time.”

“You never connected!” Torgald protested.

She raised her eyebrows. “Ah did: he knew mah rules abaowt cursin’. Took it like a man, ’im. Colden, wasn’t ’e? An’ yah’d be Gally.” She glanced out at the two black ships. “Thank yeh lot for comin’ daown.”

Torgald nodded, but said softly, “Times are changin’, Bery.”

“Don’t they always.”

The students left Torgald drinking Colden’s beer “on account of him not havin’ anywhere to put it any more,” and took Drinkers Lane on its twisting way back up the hillside. The crudely cobbled street veered drunkenly to manage the slope, and sprouted a drinking-house at almost every bend. Eyes watched them from the dim porches. Now and again, someone growled a threat at the pretty, rich children daring this unfashionable boulevard, and each time, Sorchone stopped, an overbright interest in his eyes. Rumor of them sped ahead; shortly, the loud-muttered remarks became, “Aw, shit, Kingscrofters.”

“They ain’t armed. . . .”

“Bet? G’wan, find out for us!”

Rothesay found to her delight that she could feel deliciously beautiful and murderously dangerous at the same time.

Sorchone turned them suddenly into a low, arched tunnel; the coolness under the stones bathed them with relief for a short space. They emerged into another, higher street, more tree-veiled, cooler, and all but silent. As they crossed to another alleyway, the trees and the stillness and the smell of plants seized Rothesay, and she stood and stared.

Weeds rioted in every crevice. Many of the trees grew in the street itself, scattering cobbles away from their roots. Half-rotted shutters hung awry in some windows, tree branches thrust through others, the remains of roofs sagged dangerously where still more trees had not supplanted them. A broken well cupped a stagnant pool of rainwater and green scum, amid a Dagn’s-garden of white laceflower, purple thistles, yellow sorrel and sprawling witchgrass.

She shook her head, hard, and ran after the others, down the alley into another ruined street, this one warded by a grimy marble statue of a dancing boy, whose arm and half a leg lay in pallid fragments at its base. From here Rothesay could see, above the grove of trees growing through the roof of some abandoned temple, not so far off the bannered pinnacles of the towers of the Palace. Yet they had a similarly desolated market square to pass yet, before they stepped out once more, as through a veil, into the lavish wealth of Tir Sferyn, the old imperial neighborhood that drowsed oblivious to the ruin at its margin.

Rounding the Palace through the encircling gardens, along pebbled paths by shapely mounds of brilliant flowers, exactingly trimmed lawns, clear pools rippling with shimmering red, golden and silvery fish, they walked in silence, nibbling sweets and staring at the fashionable lords and ladies decorously doing the same. Rothesay wondered what the pretty people did the rest of the time, and then realized that the blazing silver head of the woman sprinkling crumbs into a pool across the way belonged to Aristande, Princess of Andras. More interesting, if that was the word, were the dozen or so purple-liveried men-at-arms much closer to hand that she suddenly noticed grimly watching her watch the princess.

“Ghost,” Rory whispered in her ear. She jumped a foot away, but he had made no threat; only, when she met his eye, he cocked his head at the guards, and grinned.

They passed Kingscroft, took a twisting staircase down into yet another neighborhood surrendered to the Lord of the Wild, and, escaping there, arrived in a street of metalsmiths. A weird, acid reek hung in the air, but there Sorchone brought them to the shop of a spindly old coppersmith, who welcomed them heartily, closed up his store and drew them into his small and shabby garden behind. His wife greeted Sorchone like a favorite son, fussed over his friends as if they were rare treasures, kissed them all and fairly forced supper on them. Sorchone sighed blissfully over the woman’s stuffed grape leaves and, leaning over to Rothesay, he murmured, “My beloved cousin will never know what he’s missing!”

Rothesay nodded, unaware of how dimly Ristover would view their heir’s welcome here in so lowly a place; she was still thinking of the empty places.

Kahan thanked her with his glorious smile for the beer they had brought up in a lidded pail from Drummers.

“Oh, yes, old Ellan, and his wife Berythane—great friends of the Order, from way back. Drummers has been a Runedaur haven for, oh, ye gods, centuries, not with Ellan and Bery all that time, of course, but you know what I mean.

“Gally’s got Orothonian boots? I’m jealous! I wonder if we’ll head back up that way this summer?”

“I’ll miss you,” she said, but not too wistfully, unsure of just how much feeling she wanted to own up to, or even recognized.

“No, you won’t,” Kahan laughed. “Master Lee’ll see to that: you won’t have time to think of anything except where his next blow is coming from and how much, how terribly much, you want a decent sleep!”

“Oh, thanks a lot!”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he grinned.

She opened her mouth, found no retort, but suddenly thought of a new ‘shape’ for the magelight spell, and, like condensing smoke, two more arms seemed to emerge from the slit sleeves of her walking-gown.

“Oh, that’s very good,” Kahan said, surprised, but recognizing them for illusions.

“Well, you said I should be four-armed,” she said innocently, and laughed as he attempted to beat her with a pillow.

Sorchone slouched in and peremptorily ordered her to leave: Teo had found evening garb that should fit her well enough and if she presumed to wear her afternoon stuff an hour longer, he would personally make her a fashion-Ghost.

“You and what army?” she retorted, but she went, loath to give up her first pretty dress yet eager to see what was expected of evening.

Arms folded idly, Sorchone watched her dance off, then glanced down at Kahan’s couch without so much as turning his head. “You’ve but begun to intrigue her,” he drawled, “and you shall be gone for—what shall it be: six months? eight? Do you not fear she’ll forget you entirely, and you shall have to begin all over again, and maybe over her interest in another?”

Kahan gave him a slow wink. “I’ve begun to intrigue her,” he agreed. “And in my absence she will make more of me in her imagination than I could ever be in truth. If anything, she will over-anticipate me, six months from now, and if I fail to disappoint her then, I shall be a wonder indeed, but it will be such fun trying!”

Sorchone raised an eyebrow, grinned, and made him a bow.

Under the soaring oak Rothesay sprawled, and gnawed a sweet birch twig. The ‘fishing village’ down on the beach was of course no village, but only one more district of the great city. Yet like the oak at her back, Andrastir rotted from within: large enough to hold two dozens of Teginaus, once upon a time it had held a full dozen of them, and the streets between them blossomed with pillars, and statues, and flowering trees.

Half a dozen of them had died. Of the other half—oh, their main streets and their chief enclaves still bustled, but behind them lay decay, empty houses with rotting timbers; and behind them in turn, small now but spreading, islands of living wilderness. Parks for noble ladies to ride in were become perils haunted by outlaws, and even the dogs ran in wolflike packs. In the Swale, the gentle valley between Tir Sferyn on the hill called Caiernarrand, and this height, Windgate, a hunting reserve once stretched, but to pass through it she had had to face down a giddy horde of hounds who only half-remembered men who threw meat scraps instead of stealing them.

As for this place under the oak: flat as a lawn it was, and by her story-spell, a lawn it once had been, smooth and level as a green lake, spread about a fine marble mansion. But by the time the long-ago acorn had sprouted tall enough for a vigilant groundskeeper to uproot it, the keepers had gone, and weedier plants grew taller still, for a time. Now the old oak swallowed up all the sun here, and time had hammered the house behind into an open, walled garden for Dagn the Piper: wild cherries and a bright sycamore danced to the Gulf wind where flowers of Sferan society once danced to flutes and harps.

Andrastir rotted, its districts mere clumps and clusters tenuously connected on decaying branches of boulevards. The fishing district below might just as well be a far hamlet on a desolate coast.

Having mashed one end of her twig to splinters, Rothesay turned it over and began on the other. When the war-train had first ridden out, the first time she had set foot out of Colderwild in a month, a sensation as of coming up for air had taken her; she had volunteered for scouting duty as often as they would entrust it to a novice. Coming into Andrastir yesterday, for all her supposed enthusiasm for the treat, seemed like suffocation once again. And through her dismay at the broken palaces and lost streets, she recognized—a kind of smugness. The Lord of the Wild was lord still. A strange delight filled her at that thought, strange, and yet faintly familiar, as though it came from long ago or very far away. Dimly she remembered that the thought had once terrified her; strange. Certainly she felt more at her ease out here than in the Kingscroft enclave.

Well she might! she laughed at herself, and laughed aloud. ‘Ease’ in a Runedaur hall came only to the dead, or nearly dead. She had done off her light afternoon garb for richer, heavier evening wear but no one called any kind of truce and her whole left side still throbbed from the bruising where treading on her unfamiliar skirts in flight had flung her down a flight of stairs. There had been no respite; the Kingscroft students knew their own hiding places all too well. Half-blind with fatigue, in the wee hours she finally sought sanctuary in the infirmary, and found half a dozen other students, including Rory and Cheek-nose, already dozing there. She had curled up with Lacie under Kahan’s cot for what remained of the night.

Now she was run off on her own. Who was to mind? She thought she was beginning to grasp the Runedaur concept of rules: a null set, as far as she could determine, barring a few items that were more like gentleman’s agreements anyway. Nothing forbade her sleeping outside the Runedaur enclave, nothing, it seemed, forbade her from doing whatever she wished. So she had discovered, when Carialla discovered Rothesay’s intention to come down to this battle.

Carialla asked her not to go. Rothesay dug up nerve enough to reply that she would rather go. Carialla explained the importance of finding the Sferemath; Rothesay expressed perfect willingness to help—after the battle. Carialla detailed the risks of war. Rothesay held her ground.

At first Rothesay actually entertained the hope that Carialla would not mind too much. Then, in terror of the Lady’s potential wrath, she had played a little game with herself: how long can I keep this up before I crack? and laughed, jitteringly, at herself as she played. Then as she began to sense Carialla’s manipulations, she grew angry, determined to win this contest at any cost, the ‘prize’ forgotten.

She paused here in her demolition of the birch twig, gazed out through the tossing mulleins and carrot-flowers to the blustery Gulf. It occurred to her now that if she had won, then, in that mood: if Carialla had yielded to Rothesay’s anger—oddly, she would have felt no gladness. Satisfaction, certainly; triumph, possibly. But not pleasure. Come to think of it, no argument she had ever won in anger had left her with anything but a bad taste. Maybe that was what Kahan had meant about Rory?

Finally, though, she had persisted out of sheer wonder. For Carialla argued. She persuaded. She scolded scaldingly. She did not threaten, though, except in an indirect way that a careful listener—and Rothesay was quickly learning to listen very carefully—could see was no real threat at all. She had gone so far as to mention spells to rouse the dead, as Rothesay might be, from their rest and drag them forth to be harassed by the living once again.

But never did Carialla directly forbid her to go. Rothesay finally realized that she was never going to.

For that alone, Rothesay almost stayed in Colderwild with her. If it had not been for Flick making oblique insults about the cowardice of girls, she would have. She writhed a little, embarrassed now at having been goaded by a child’s taunts. She remembered Sorchone’s merry wink when they packed up the battle tent, and his conspiratorial explanation: “As long as he lets me!” So, the Runedaur taught some way of becoming proof against insult. Chalk that one up as a ‘must learn’!

But as for rules: if the Mistress of Runedaur could not, or would not, demand obedience even in something so important, who lesser could demand it in lesser affairs?

Gloom deepened under the oak. The shadow of the high hill dimmed the fisher-home below and reached across the restless greying Gulf towards the vague East. Rothesay began to wonder what fruits the land about her might yield; she had brought nothing to eat from Kingscroft.

A tiny black hand, black as coal and no bigger than the ball of her thumb, proffered a bunch of wild onions. Unaware that she had even moved, Rothesay stood now plastered to the bole of the tree, her gaze terror-fixed on the little figure before her.