Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

She closed the door softly behind her, and, freed from Carialla’s pool of dread, her sense of the ridiculous burst up for air. ‘Princess of Daria’—she laughed merrily aloud at the notion.

“Ha, ha—auugh!”

Her low laugh leaped to a screech as twelve stone of partly-trained muscle smashed into her ribs and took her to the floor. Floor, flesh, and black satin whirled about her and she came up possessed of a wrist in one hand, a throat in the other, an elbow pinned under one knee and a solar plexus under the other. She stared down into Ulflaed’s sulky face.

“Er—Ghost,” she remembered to claim.

“Yeah, yeah. What do you want?” He glared up at her from under dark lashes. In such a predicament, students of briefer residency vented frustration verbally on the victor; longer-term students generally were cross with themselves. She was not certain which Ulflaed was, but sensed an undercurrent to his ire that she could not quite place; thwarted revenge for the mushrooms, most like. Well, it was his problem.

“The latrines, for Rory.”

“Whatever,” he said gracelessly, and she loosed her hold.

He eeled free just as soon as her grip was slack enough and bounded to light and soundless feet. The indefinable undercurrent spread as open gloating over his face, and he eased towards her, cocked for further battle. “Ah-ah-ah,” he chided softly. “I didn’t yield, infant!”

Rothesay bolted.

The end of Ulflaed’s sash, weighted for the purpose, snared an ankle and she crashed once more to the floor, with stunning force. When the stars cleared, she was Ulflaed’s prisoner—and a little pressure from his fingertips below her ear threatened to bring the stars back.

“Ghost!” he grinned. She thought hard for a way out, but he teased her consciousness again. “Come on, infant, yield or pass out: it’s all the same to me!”

She sighed. “Yield.”

“Wonnnderful.” He clamped his mouth to hers—and she flung him six feet into the wall. “Hey!”

“Hey, yourself!” she growled, eyes flashing like a cat’s as she leaped up. From what little she had absorbed yet of the queer ways of this place, she was certain that Ulflaed’s attempted claim was well out of bounds, though she did not know why.

Ulflaed did. He sighed. “Damn, I should learn! Sorry, Sister. But, holy Dere, girl, you’re tempting! No!” he yelped, flinging out a hand to ward off something. “Not the Temptation Lecture!”

Rothesay half-grinned, despite herself. “Haven’t heard it.”

“Aren’t you in for a treat!” He gathered himself back to his feet and reeled in his weighted sash, bound it about his waist and finally ventured, “Kiss of Peace, then?”

That was different. That, she had learned about two weeks ago, scant hours before Leoff decided she should be his own personal playtoy. Rory, barbered to his satisfaction, had turned to kiss her, and she had darted back indignantly, turning to all-out flight when he tried again with a dangerous new light of mischief in his eyes. She had fled, but Rory proved the swifter, running where she dared not walk, leaping where she scarcely dared climb. Cornering her at last, he had disengaged her adamant will with a cryptic exclamation: “Look, if I have to kiss the Hawk-man, then by all that’s holy, Sugar, I get to kiss you!” And in her instant’s bewilderment, he had. To her sheepish embarrassment, it had been a kiss brotherly enough, despite his enthusiasm, altogether unlike Ulflaed’s attempt of a moment ago. Only after he had collected his prize had Rory troubled to explain the Order’s Kiss of Peace. It served many ends: greeting, farewell, apology, celebration, condolence, thanks; sometimes several at once; often it filled those nameless spaces that no mere word could compass. She had been cross with Rory for several minutes for not explaining sooner.

Still a little warily, now, she exchanged a decorous peck with Ulflaed; and laughed.

“What?” he demanded sharply.

“Us—kissing, while watching that no one’s hands get too near a knife, and minding our balance—”

“—And that no one else is sneaking up the hall on us!” he joined in the humor. “And I don’t forget I’ve won a Ghost claim. Serve me supper after all?” He leered triumphantly.

“Do I have a choice?”

“I could think of something else!”

“Supper’s fine!”

“Done. Busy?” he asked suddenly.

“Er—no, I don’t think so—?”

Ulflaed cocked his head in invitation, flung a companionable arm over her shoulders—up over her shoulders, she was half a head taller than he—and drew her off down the hall. Rothesay bore the arm warily for a few steps before asking, “Is there, well, a ‘truce time’ between Ghosts? For how long?”

He jumped a yard away, at full alert. “No, there isn’t!”

They stared at each other mistrustfully for some seconds, and then the boy laughed. “No truce time, but there is a Truce Hole. That’s where we’re going. Truce till we get there, though?”

“Gladly!”

“What was so funny?” he asked as they fell into stride. “You came out of Dragon-lady’s lair, and—laughed!”

“Oh. She said I could be princess of Daria.”

“Yeah?” The chieftain’s son-turned-Runedaur pondered that, then glanced up, around, at the halls of his strange home with deep satisfaction, and laughed also.

The Tower of Night was ornamented at its peak with three huge dragon-faces, mouths agape, stone tongues lolling. Ulflaed, standing with Rothesay atop Colderwild’s southern wall, stared up the sleek sides of the tower and whistled softly, and from the southeastern mouth a rope presently tumbled. He caught an end and presented it to her with a bow. “After you, Princess.”

Owing to the overhang of the dragon’s head, she was unable to climb walking the wall as she had in Floodholding; Ulflaed showed her how to grip the rope with her feet, and, ignoring the height above and the drop below, she climbed slowly, feeling like a spider dangling on a single hopeful thread, and praying that the wind idling about the tower stayed lazy.

“No infants! No infants!” shrilled a voice above, and she flushed and hesitated, ‘infant’ being the seniors’ word of blanket scorn for Colderwild’s neophytes.

“Shut your yap, it’s Rothesay!” a more enthusiastic, and older, voice squelched the first: ‘infant’ was a term not of physical age, but of ‘Runedaur age,’ as the students called it. ‘Youngest’ of all, she qualified, but the older boys pleased to make an exception.

Her head cleared the dragon’s jawline, and she found a snug cave for half a dozen or more friendly souls crowded in its jowls. From the far side, one arm wrapped cozily about a stony tooth, Rory flashed her his sun-god smile and she beamed right back.

“Oh, yes!” Dark, lanky Móravn, crushed thinner than ever between Rory’s bare, muscular thigh and blond Hael’s well-wrapped stoutness, breathed in sensuous ecstasy at sight of her. His eyes twinkled. “Wondered what Ulfie was bringing for treats!”

Arnaf of the broken tooth put out a sturdy arm to help her over the lip, and yelled back down, “Thanks, Ulf! You can go now!”

“Yeah, go away! ’Bye, Ulf! Get off!” the others chorused cheerfully, and Arnaf added a raspberry.

“Any of you ever want to come back down out of there?” Ulflaed threatened companionably, his voice from somewhere well above the lower wall.

“While my dark beauty and all my desire is up here? You crazy?” Móravn yelled back, to general laughter.

“Shut up, Ravn! Make your Sister feel like the prize chicken at a cock-fight, why don’t you,” Rory snapped, though his appreciative grin was anything but brotherly. “Here, Sugar, have a sit, and remember we are all still very young!”

“‘Sister,’ well, they do say incest is best. Ow!” Móravn yelped as Hael punched his skull. “Peace,” he offered gravely, handing her a sweetcake. “It was only a paean to your womanly glory.”

Rothesay accepted the cake, but had to grin at the word ‘womanly.’ “We are all still very young, Brother,” she admonished him equally gravely, her green eyes dancing.

Móravn raked her with a critical stare. “Could be, at that. Flick, quit hogging the wine or you can’t come up here any more!”

“I brought it!” the boy protested, but handed it over.

“That can be fixed,” said Hael. Deftly he plucked the bottle from Móravn’s grasp and personally passed it to Rothesay with a flourish. Móravn seized his knee in a pincer grip. Hael’s scream brought her heart to her mouth almost to meet the wine and she choked; but the scream was plainly not one of pain and the other boys roared with laughter. Hael jerked and twitched and pounded on Móravn as he fought to win free of the dreadful tickling grip.

“Hey! You’re going to pulp the rest of us!” Arnaf protested.

“You almost kicked me out!” added Flick.

“Really? Tickle him again, Ravn!”

“You shut up!”

“There is,” said the one boy who had not yet spoken at all, a brownhaired sheepdog named Juris, “something to be said for maturity. But that is not a matter of age.” He rose as well as he could and made a cramped, but passable, bow to her.

“You’re only twelve, Juris!” snapped Flick.

“Point made,” he retorted. With peace restored, Ulflaed finally climbed in.

They had a sizeable feast: sacks of sweetcakes, several loaves of bread and a few rounds of cheese, as well as a couple dozen of apples, a basket of roasted acorns, and Flick’s wine. Rothesay wondered why they had troubled to carry so much up to this eyrie, then watched astonished as every crumb vanished: few creatures can eat as active human boys can eat, and these were exceptionally active.

“Ugh!” Arnaf moaned, flexing his shoulders. “Cobry twice, and you, and Hael, and Ulflaed—and you!” he pointed ferociously at Rory, who flashed a superior grin. “You three times—”

“Four.”

Arnaf frowned fleetingly, but ignored it and went on. “And Garrod twice, and Harlan Grey, and Master Merry—now I know why we worship Death: ’cos after you’re beat up enough, it starts sounding like a jolly idea!”

“Poor baby!”

“Could be worse,” said Móravn philosophically, toying with a final acorn to make it last. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s been a damned holiday, with His Ladyship out of the place!”

“Who?” demanded Rothesay, over the others’ chorused groans.

“Who?” Móravn echoed in lofty disbelief. “Surely you’ve met our good Lady Kahan? Bastard never sleeps—and sees to it that you don’t, either!”

“He doesn’t quit—ever!” Flick agreed.

Juris evidently felt the subject worth opening his mouth for only the second time. “When you’ve had more than you can stand; when you think you won’t live to make it to bed again; when you’re so tired you can’t find the floor except by falling on it—that’s when he shows up to beat the snot out of you, that last snot you didn’t even know you had left.”

“And then he hits on you again!” Ulflaed added, grimacing.

“Wish he’d learn when to lay off,” Hael grumbled.

“Oh, you bunch of girls! —Sorry, Sugar,” Rory patted her knee. “He’s got to, fools! You think Deorgard’s going to stand politely by some day, while you catch up on your beauty rest? A few bruises to teach you you’ve got snot left you didn’t know about—that isn’t just going to save your skin someday, but maybe the skin of whoever’s with you who might really be out of snot!”

“OOH! Would you listen to who’s sticking up for the Hawkman!” Móravn crowed, then roared as Rory seized a vicious handful of hair, twisted hard, and pulled away before Móravn could retaliate. Móravn grabbed after him, and Ulflaed kicked Móravn.

“Simmer down, damn it! This is the Truce Hole! Rory, man, you’ve got to get over this Kahan thing!”

“Yeah!” piped up Flick. “What is it, anyway? You’ve got muscles Kay never heard of—”

He was cut off by booing laughter. “Hark at the baby ogling over muscle!” Hael jeered. “Afraid you’re not going to get any, Runt?”

“It isn’t muscles I’m concerned about,” Juris murmured, but only Rothesay seemed to hear, or to catch his secret grin.

“Where is Kahan?” Rothesay turned the topic, only to discover Rory liked this one even less than the other.

“Dunno. Off on some assignment somewhere,” answered Móravn. “Probably that’s what’s got our boy Rory here stoked up: not being sent on one himself—like the rest of us babes. Damned fool hothead! Think they’re going to entrust anything to your flash temper?”

Every one of Rory’s inarguably well-developed, and well-displayed, muscles displayed themselves ominously, but he contained himself gloriously, not betraying temper by so much as a raised voice. Rothesay reminded herself to compliment him on his control, later when there was no mocking audience; then she recalled that his desire was not to get angered in the first place: the compliment would be hollow.

A silver bell chimed faint but clear over the roofs, walls, and gardens of Colderwild.

“Coming, Mistress,” Hael sighed heavily. He lurched to his feet, waded through his fellow students, gathered up several bights of the rope and tumbled headfirst out over the dragon’s tongue. A long-drawn, fading wheeeeee floated briefly up, truncated by a harsh grunt trailed by cursing.

“Misjudged the swing,” Arnaf, watching over the side, reported with a grin. He pulled on a pair of stout leather gloves. “That’s my call, too! Eat warily tonight!” And he too slipped from the eyrie.

“What’s the bell?” She had heard it every afternoon from the lists, but Leoff had never paid it heed.

“Sothia’s starting supper. Everyone who’s supposed to help cook, that’s your summons,” said Flick. “You cooking too, Rory?” he asked, watching the redhead take up the rope in turn.

“No,” he said, and dropped from view.

“I am,” sighed Rothesay, and climbed down very slowly. She meditated deeply on leather gloves on the way: whatever magic had toughened her sinews, it had not hardened her hide.

The rope ended at the top of the ramparts, by the door to the stairwell within. Rory had evidently climbed, or jumped, from the wall; he waited casually by the doorway below at the tower’s foot. As Rothesay looked down, Arnaf emerged from the lower door, all too heedlessly. The resulting conjunction was concise, violent, and Rory’s.

She burst from the tower door herself just as Rory genially hauled a grimacing Arnaf back to his feet. “Like I said,” he grinned smugly, displaying four powerful fingers. Arnaf’s face twisted indignantly, and he drew back an ill-considered fist. Rory snarled. “Move like that and you’ll make it five, Shit-for-liver! Cover your ribs, keep that elbow down—it’s not a chicken’s roost!”

Arnaf subsided sullenly. “I’ll get you, see if I don’t!” he muttered as the three of them moved off together.

“You try,” said Rory agreeably.

Supper preparations were almost as boisterous as the noon-meal. Garrod was in a musical mood, making a nuisance of himself with a pair of wooden spoons, with which he played every pot, pan and kettle in the kitchen, without melody but with a fine ear for tones, nor yet above trying to ring one out of a poor student’s skull. A small, disheveled woman armed with a huge carrot guarded his back from the jovially annoyed workers, and she sang as she grabbed the inattentive, corrected their posture, struck them in the belly and ordered them to breathe. Fine grey hair escaped from a knot at the nape of her neck and floated into her face.

She grabbed the Horsemaster’s naked buttocks in a playful squeeze to persuade him to move them out of her way, only to have them waved saucily back at her. She smacked him, and he swept her up in one mighty arm and planted a hearty kiss on her mouth. Then he chomped off a third of her carrot. She twitched, making some sharp move out of Rothesay’s view, and Caltern dropped her with a yelp like a startled cur. She landed lightly, half-crouching, and for a moment the two stood, eyes locked, the towering Horsemaster and the diminutive woman. Then she stretched up, poised like a hummingbird before a hairy red flower, her lips puckered for a kiss. Caltern pursed his own, and they exchanged a piquant token of peace, before he turned her by the shoulders and pointed out Rothesay. The woman brightened and came dancing through the supper-bransle, grinning a gap-toothed grin.

“Hello, little one!” she chimed, though she was scarcely more than half Rothesay’s height. “I’m Maarfi the Music Mistress, pardon the alliteration. When can you come up to my hall? I’ve been that cross with Lee, keeping you all to himself all these weeks, and you so pretty and he never noticed once, now, did he?”

“Well, no—”

“And that’s fine with you? Well, everything in its time. Have you any music theory? Any science of harmonic intervals? Well, any astronomy, then? Ah, names but no numbers; pity. Can you sing? Do so.”

Rothesay stammered into one of Artame’s spell-songs. Maarfi tilted her nose. “Trying to impress me with your Classical knowledge? Come up tomorrow with something ribald on your tongue. You’re out of Geillari-land; you must have picked up some ripe ones.” Then she fixed Rothesay’s posture, made her breathe as Dav had done in Carastloel, and turned to rescue Garrod again.

“She doesn’t just do music,” said Rory close by Rothesay’s left ear. “No, don’t move, Sugar, or you’ll lose a kidney.” She sucked a breath—and felt the point of confirmation sharp above her belt cord. “She can make sound-spells that’ll knock a falcon out of the sky, or hear what’s said a league off. Ghost.”

Before they could negotiate the price of inattention, the sound of the upper door crashing open brought all the work-music to silence. At the top of the stairs stood Móravn, garbed for travel, his pleasant face twisted in ugly fury. Half of what he shouted into the stillness was swallowed in stony echoes; the words she could catch were hard to string together, but she eventually gathered that he felt that the Order was deliberately avoiding teaching him the arts he came to learn, to keep him a slave to their decadent and licentious whims. A final roar ending in “—cocksucking frauds!” finished with the crash of the door slamming shut again.

Conversation resumed slowly, as Caltern hauled his bulk up the stairs and out.

“Huh. And I thought I had a temper,” Rory murmured softly. “Ravn’s cooked himself one fine dish of crow to eat.”

“Could it be true, about them not teaching him, I mean?”

Rory grinned, but the smile had a wistful kink in it. “It probably is true. Sugar, you can’t just saunter in here and learn whatever you choose, you learn what the Masters bloody well want you to learn—or nothing, I guess. Ravn’s problem is, he doesn’t trust them. Me, now: I want to be the finest, fastest, deadliest warrior in the North, same as Ravn or anyone; but I figure, they want me to be that, too! It’s in their best interests, isn’t it, to surround themselves—cover their backs—with the best? So if they set me up to learn something maybe I don’t like, like,” he paused, his mouth working around something bitter, “like I can’t be trusted on account of my temper, well, holy moon tits, maybe I’d better learn it, ’cos that’s a big hole in my, let’s say nature, that somebody could maybe use against me someday. But it isn’t pretty, Sugar. Listen, people say we get possessed by demons at knighthood. That’s a hell of a joke: if anything, we get unpossessed! Demons aren’t ‘things’ that come and get you, they’re just a way of thinking about these, call ’em holes in your soul—”

Unable to resist, Rothesay solemnly lifted one bare foot and inspected the bottom. Rory snorted and yanked her braid for revenge.

“Anyway,” he went on, tossing his head towards the stairs, “I figure Ravn’s just gotten a good hard look at a ‘demon’ he doesn’t want to own up to, and now he’s running scared. It happens. Hope the meathead doesn’t get into too much trouble before he figures out he’s running from his own shadow. Here, let me help you finish that up: company for supper tonight.”

He seemed to have forgotten he had won a Ghost claim. She did not remind him.