“I’ll bring more wood, at least,” Luap said.
“If you’re determined on it… there’s a stack in the barton corner.”
Outside, in the blowing dark, the cold wind took his breath away. Binis had gone with Cob and Vrelan; he found the woodstack on his own, and thought about moving some in by magery. But Binis might see, and that would do Cob no good. He lugged in several armloads before Cob returned. By then it had begun to snow, small dry flakes that stung his face.
Morning’s light barely penetrated the blowing snow; Luap and Cob fought their way around the end of the grange and into the barn built against it, carrying buckets of hot water from the hearth. “We should have built peasant cottages, wi’ inside ways to the cowbyres,” Cob said, struggling to shut the door against the wind. The horses whickered, their breath pluming into the cold air. When they drank, their whiskers whitened almost at once. Cob nodded to the ladder. “If you can make the climb, it’ll be easier for me.” So Luap climbed into the narrow hayloft, and threw down enough for all the beasts at once, then climbed back down to help Cob feed them.
Later, the snowfall lessened, though the wind still scoured flurries off the drifts. All four of them went out to check on the poorer folk in the village. Luap had never had a clear idea of what a rural Marshal did when not holding court or drill. Cob apparently thought that a Marshal’s job included everything no one else remembered to do… he was remarkably like Gird, Luap thought, in the way that he had made himself a caretaker for the whole village. He had Vrelan chop firewood for a family in which the man had a broken arm, and the mother was pregnant. He and Luap climbed up to mend a gap in the roof of one cottage, where slates had blown off overnight. Cob himself dragged one drunk out into the street and made him fetch clean water from the public well to clean up the mess he’d made on the floor, while the man’s wife tried to make excuses for him. Binis, clearly astonished that Cob considered her available for such work, was kept as busy as the rest of them.
“It’s like this,” Cob explained after darkness had fallen and they were eating in the inn. “Some Marshals think we’re just judges and drillmasters, but someone’s got to do all the rest. Back afore the war, each village had its headman or headwoman, and in some places, even the magelords took care of their people. Everyone knew what needed doing and how to do it. They knew who really needed help, and who was a wastrel. But the war changed that. People may not live in the village they were born in; we’ve got crafters and merchants and gods know what all, living all amongst each other. And whatever you say about one fair law for everyone, some things just plain aren’t fair. You don’t make it fair by treating everyone alike, either. That’s all I do—what the village head would have done, or a good lord: either one. Know the people, know who needs help, and who needs a good knock on the head to straighten ’em up.”
“But you can’t do it all yourself.” Binis looked tired, but less sulky than the days before. Perhaps work agreed with her; Gird had always said it was good for the sulks.
“No,” Cob agreed, wiping his bowl with a slice of bread. “No, I can’t do it all, not even with young Vre, here. But that’s what I tell them on drill nights—just as in an army, we’re all parts of each other. If you let your neighbor go hungry, he’s not likely to help you when the robbers come. Same way, if you’re always asking for help, but don’t give any, soon no one cares. I went after Hrelis today, you saw—the drunk. His wife’s always coming for grange-gift, says he’s sick. We know what kind of sick; Vre told me last night he was in here drinking and begging. So for him I have a bucket of cold water, but poor Jos, who got his arm broken helping someone reset a wheel, we’ll do what we can for him. When his arm’s mended, he’ll be around here doing chores without anyone saying a word.” He belched contentedly, and smiled at Binis. “But you’re right—I don’t do it alone. I don’t have to check Morlan’s widow any more, and I didn’t have to find homes for the children whose parents were killed by lightning in the pasture last spring. This grange is beginning to function as a village should—with care and common sense.“
“And that’s the other reason you wouldn’t be Marshal-General, isn’t it?” Luap asked. “You had in mind what a grange should be, but you wanted to show it, not tell people.”
Cob flushed and looked away. “I’m no more skilled with words than Gird was,” he said. “It’s what he did, after all. He showed us—”
“And yelled at us,” Luap said, grinning. Cob’s dream was not his dream, but he knew it came close to Gird’s dream… and he could see it was a worthy dream. “But it’s going to take unusual Marshals to do what you’re doing.”
Now Cob grinned back. “Oh—well, that young Seri, you know, she used to talk of things like this. Her and me and Raheli and some of the others: we were thinking what a grange is for, when there’s no war. It can’t be just to collect money to send to Fin Panir.” Binis started to say something, then stopped. Luap wondered if Cob had convinced her; he doubted it. But Cob had convinced him.
That day and the next, with the drifts too high for travel, they stayed in Cob’s grange and helped with his definition of grange work. Luap found himself able to admit he had picked a bad time to come looking for soil, but that he’d wanted something to work with for spring planting. “And I was with Dorhaniya when she died,” he said. “I’m glad I was there, though I’d hoped she’d like the new place…”
“Tell you what,” Cob said. “Come thaw, I’ll find you a place to take your soil—there’s unclaimed land between me and the next grange south. If I understand it, we’ll thaw here before you will, so you won’t lose much time. How would that be?”
“I don’t think the Marshal-General would approve,” said Binis. Cob gave her a look Luap would not like to have turned on him.
“I didn’t ask you, Binis, and I’m not asking the Marshal-General. If it’s unclaimed land, he can’t deny it: he’s already given his approval. Whatever his quarrels with Luap, the law says he’s made a contract, and he can’t back out now.”
“But we’re not supposed to help—”
“We’re not supposed to act like bratty children quarreling over sweets, either.” Cob glared at her, red-faced. “D’you think this is what Gird wanted? We won the war; the mageborn aren’t our lords any more. Now it’s time for peace, and peace means helping each other. And you might remember that Luap here was Gird’s closest assistant: he did more for Gird than any of the rest of us, including your precious Marshal-General.”
Luap had not expected that strong a defense, even from Cob. It embarrassed him, shook his certainty in the peasants’ opposition— a certainty that Binis increased whenever she opened her mouth. Now Cob turned to him.
“How about it—will you trust me to find you some good soil, within the Marshal-General’s limitations?”
“Of course, I will,” Luap said. “I will come back to Fin Panir in early spring—your early spring.”
“Good. That’s settled. It’ll save Binis here from riding all over the countryside in winter—I don’t suppose you can whisk her back to Fin Panir by magery, eh?”
“Alas, no. We’ll have to go as we came.”
It was as cold a trip as the one out, but Binis seemed slightly less hostile; at least she seemed convinced that Luap, too, suffered from the cold. Luap hoped that Cob would not get in too much trouble with the Marshal-General while he was gone… but when he considered the two men, he thought Cob would come off well in any contest between them. So he returned to the stronghold with the embroidery Dorhaniya had given him, determined to prove himself to Cob as well as his own people.
“Now we can begin to move,” the black-cloaked leader said. “For mortals time runs swiftly; they become accustomed to safety, and cease to watch for danger. They hope all will be well, and hoping so, believe it to be. A year, two years, of peace, and they think peace eternal.” He paused for the scornful laughter, like a rustle of dry leaves, before going on. “We must learn more about them,” he s
aid. “Especially the prince. We must know them better than they know themselves—not a difficult task. For each weakness, we will provide the appropriate temptation… and remember, if we can use what they call their virtures to entrap them, so much the better.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Luap returned to Fin Panir while the canyons of his own land were still choked with snow. This time, the guards at the High Lord’s Hall merely shrugged when he appeared. The Marshal-General, he was told, was “in conference,” too busy to see him; Luap found someone who claimed to know where Binis was. He went down to the lower city to visit Eris. Dorhaniya had left her enough to live on, she had said after the funeral, and her own skill at needlecraft would help.
“Sir,” she said, when she answered his knock on the door. From her expression, she had not expected to see him again. Then she relaxed. “You’ve come for the banner?”
He had forgotten it, in the sorrow of Dorhaniya’s death and the difficult trip with Binis. “No—or rather yes, I will be glad to have it, of course, but that’s not why I came. How are you?”
“I miss her,” Eris said. Then she stood aside and beckoned him in. “There’s lots of them don’t understand, you know. Why I ever stayed with her after the war, why I stay here now. She was just another rich mageborn, they say, just another foolish old rich woman.” She led Luap back to the small sitting room he had seen before. “Of course that’s true: she was old, and rich, and foolish, and mageborn, but that wasn’t the half of it. You know: you met her.”
“I know.” Luap looked around. He had thought he could forget nothing he had seen, and yet he could not be sure nothing had changed. The embroidery frame was missing… but what else?
“I didn’t stay just because she was rich, and I never wanted for anything while she was alive. It wasn’t that.”
“I know,” Luap said again. He had never completely understood the bond between Eris and Dorhaniya, but it had nothing to do with gold or comfort: he knew that much.
“She was so—so dithery, sometimes. Her family—her own and her husband’s—they both thought she was short of wits. That’s why her father sent me to her when I was just a child, and she had only married the year before. Keep her going, they said, as long as you can; she’s got no sense of her own. But they were wrong.”
Eris sat down, and smoothed her skirt. Luap didn’t know what to say. He felt that he should comfort her, but she needed nothing he could give. Except perhaps his listening ear, at the moment. “She knew people,” Eris said. “She couldn’t always say what she meant about them, but she knew what they were like inside. She knew her husband was a silly fool whose pride would get him in trouble with the king, but she never complained about it. She knew that sister of hers, the one who didn’t marry Arranha, was mean to the bone, but she never complained about that, even when her sister cheated her out of her mother’s jewels. I won’t say she was never wrong, for she had a soft heart, but she wasn’t wrong often.” Luap wanted to ask what Dorhaniya had thought of him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. She had seen through him several times that he knew of, commenting on fear or anger that no one else had ever seemed to see. She had scolded him, too; he would like to have known that he’d satisfied her afterwards.
Eris looked at him. “She liked you,” she said. “She didn’t think you were perfect, mind, but she liked you.”
“I wish she’d lived to see our place in the mountains,” Luap said. “I wish you would come.” That popped out before he thought, and he wasn’t at all sure he meant it. But Eris shook her head.
“I don’t want to leave Fin Panir; I lived here in this house with her and it’s got my memories. But I thank you for the offer; ’twas generous. She always said you were generous.”
“Are you getting along all right?”
“Well enough. There’s some as think I shouldn’t be living in this house alone, that it’s too much space for one person, but my lady left it to me, and the courts upheld that—” Luap had had to use all his influence there, for some considered mageborn wills to be invalid, and this was not an area Gird had thought much about. “—so I’ll be all right. I may take lodgers, later, when I’ve decided what to do with the rest of her things.”
She took him around the house, then, showing off the treasures of a vanished aristocracy, things that had survived because Eris and Dorhaniya’s other servants had defended the house and her. Much of it did not interest Luap at all: the cedarwood needleboxes carefully notched for knitting needles and embroidery needles of all sizes, the little bags of fine grit for cleaning and polishing the needles, the many boxes of colored yarn and thread, narrow bands of lace and embroidery for decorating garments, and small rooms full of Dorhaniya’s best gowns.
“I could cut these up for the cloth,” Eris said, rubbing the skirt of one blue and green brocade between her fingers, “but I can’t bear the thought. No one wears such clothes now; they’d be used for patches, or rags, and it’s a waste.” They were beautiful; he remembered how Dorhaniya had looked, and how the mageladies of his childhood had looked… how their gowns had rustled, how he had reached out to finger the cloth, the lace, and been slapped away.
More interesting to Luap were the bowls and vases and trays, the sets of fine tableware, the silver spoons. “She had to sell some of it, the last few years,” Eris said. “But most of it’s here. You don’t have to worry that I’d go hungry, sir, not with all this.”
“I’m glad,” Luap said. He would have felt obliged to help her some way, and yet he had no wealth to be generous with. He touched one of the bowls almost guiltily… as a child he had been delighted with the beautiful things he saw, fascinated by the fine detail of tiny carvings, the play of color and gleaming light in rich fabrics and embroidery. Other things were more important, of course, but he wished that Gird had not been so convinced that plainness was a sort of virtue in itself. The peasants had made beautiful things as well, as beautiful as they could within the limits of the materials they had. They had never had silver and gold enough to make it into spoons or dishes, but he had no doubt they would have… how could anyone not prefer the feel and glow of silver, which never changed the flavor of the food being eaten.
Eris watched him, musing. “She would have liked you to have some of her things,” she said finally. “But she did not know what you would like; you never said much.”
Luap shook his head. “How could I? As a child, I had one life, and in manhood another: there was no bridge between them until I met her. I found it hard to talk about, as you know.”
“But your eyes speak, and your fingers when you touched that bowl. I have more than I need… would you take a few things, in her memory?”
“She made the banner,” Luap said softly; tears stung his eyes. “I have no right to anything…”
“Nonsense.” Eris brushed her hands down her apron. “You have not asked; I have offered. That makes the difference. And since you have no right, as you say, you have no right to choose: I will choose, and you will take what I give you.” Luap wanted to laugh, she must have spoken in just that tone to Dorhaniya when that lady “dithered” as she put it. He could easily imagine her settling her lady’s mind to a decision. If Dorhaniya had felt half the relief he did now, it was no wonder she had been as loyal to her servant as her servant was to her.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling less guilt and more anticipation. “I do—I would be happy to accept whatever you choose.”
“Very well,” Eris said. “You’ll take her needlework for you back this trip; I’ll make my selections and have them ready for you next time. Not more than a quarter-year, either—is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Luap said. She shook her head, smiling.
“And don’t be saucy with me: you were her prince, but to me you’re just another half-mage.” The joy fell from him like a dropped cloak; she saw it in his face and came at once to put her hands to his cheeks. “No—I didn’t mean it like that. I cannot feel for you what
she did; I have no magery. But you are more than just another half-mage to me: you are a man she trusted and admired, a man who was kind to her beyond the requirements of his place. I would not give you anything of hers if I did not also respect and admire you, in my own way.” She gave his head a little shake. “Though if you could laugh a bit at yourself, it would be better for you.”
“I’m sorry,” Luap said, tasting the bitter salt of unshed tears.
“No—don’t waste your time being sorry. Go and do what you need not be sorry for.” Gird’s advice, from another peasant, but this one had given him respect and admiration; Luap lifted his head and smiled at her.
“I will,” he said.
Binis in the spring was slightly less sour than Binis in deep winter; she actually smiled at Luap briefly. He had debated walking the whole way to Cob’s grange to accommodate her, but decided it would simply take too long. She had ridden it in bad weather; now she could ride in good. She did not argue or complain; perhaps she had anticipated this and practiced in the meantime. Despite the usual spring mud, they made good time, rising early to ride all day. They stayed in different granges than they had in winter, since they covered more ground each day, so Luap did not have to deal with the same Marshals. And this time, when they rode up to Cob’s grange, Binis took both horses’ reins without asking, and led them around back while Luap went in the open grange door. They had ridden late; Cob had started drill with three hands of yeomen who were bending and stretching together.
“Luap! I’ve been expecting you.” He turned the group over to his yeoman-marshal, and came forward to clasp arms. “Where’s your watchdog?”
“Putting the horses away,” Luap said. Cob grinned at him.
“Getting her trained, eh? Using your charm on her?”
Luap winced and shrugged. “Don’t say that; it sounds bad. And you know better. She rides better.”