One
Iknow what people say about me.I know they laugh at my misfortunes.I know they blame me for the wars and the hardships that followed.The demons.The priest who could move thousands of soldiers like they were toys.
I used to care.
I’m writing this down to make sense of it for myself.And because a very wise man once told me he was writing the tale of his life, and I’ve found myself thinking of him as of late.
When people tell my tale, they usually start with the raid at Kell’s Crossing.I will start a short time earlier, a moon cycle before that day maybe.
Ah!You believe you’ve caught me already.She thinks of the moon!She is a conjurer as they say!I care not.I reject your childish ways of measuring time.I reject them entirely.The moon works very well for my purposes.
I begin my tale on the day of my testing, in the cobbled courtyard of my childhood home.It was raining and foggy, which was not unusual where I’m from.The air smelled like moss and mud, and the wind groaned as it wove through the parapets.I was wearing the clothing of my order, something I now find abhorrent, but at the time was endlessly proud of.My dark blue dress looked like a simple gentlewoman’s gown from the outside, but sewn within were a thousand pockets and inside each pocket was a lump of solid iron.
When I passed my testing and became a goldkeeper properly, my dresses would hide gold in their fabric.The iron placeholder existed because the order didn’t want anyone to know how I moved without gold in my gown.This could give away hints about how much I was carrying on a given day, so I was to wear iron always.
Because they wanted this, I wanted it, and I spent my youth moving slowly, my shoulders aching, my back and hips begging for rest.
The material of the dress had been made damp and then oiled.Dampened and oiled again.My skin and hair were thick with oil as well—this was the way of beauty in my country.A woman must always look like she’d just stepped out of a lake.
I remember my father’s face that day so clearly—the sorrow in the lines on his brow, the unease in his shoulders as I approached the party that had come to test me.
Four men were stretching their legs after their long ride while their horses were led away.There was an older man whom I would come to know as Waldmire.He served as Grainkeeper at the Hard-Won Kepen.With him was his eldest son, Loric, as well as an attendant who caught my attention because of the crookedness of his nose, which had been broken at least once before, and the tan of his skin—an unusual feature where I’m from.Waldmire's younger son travelled with them as well; he was fourteen perhaps.
“Three days without rain, what do you do?”I didn’t know Loric’s name at the time, but it was him speaking, so I gave him my full attention.He was fair-haired with a jaw nearly as wide as his forehead.Because he was the one asking the questions, he was the one I would live with, should I answer correctly and pass.To become a Goldkeeper was to enter into a conjugal arrangement with a Grainkeeper.Both orders needed children after all.
I remember thinking him tall, but not particularly clever-looking.My opinion of him is much changed since then.Still, I gave the correct answer, accepting him and his cock without any thought on the matter at all.As I said, I wanted to please my order.But maybe it is more truthful to say I was afraid to displease them.
I said, “Reduce spending.Pray.”
“These words don’t mean what we think they do, do they?”Waldmire said, his eyes narrowing playfully.
They didn’t.No one outside my order knew that the vaults—which were what the kepens were built to protect—needed water to open properly.Grainkeepers probably thought the moats around the kepens were for defence.And yes, they could slow anyone attacking a kepen, but their true purpose was water storage.
I smiled, just a little.I liked when people pretended the conversations I had with them were real, like my order hadn’t already dictated my every response.So I liked him immediately.“You wouldn’t be asking a gentlewoman to betray her secrets, would you?”
He smiled back, also just a little, before growing stern.“Now you tell me, clear and straight, without any fancy word-secrets—do you think you can manage a vault all on your own?”
“Yes.”
I could.It was my entire purpose.
“Hmm,” he said in a tone that was endearingly approving.He turned back to his son.“Right then, ask her the next question.”
Two
“Did you pass?”
My brother Dayne spoke the moment I was in the dim of the kepen’s halls.He was sitting on the stone window ledge, his black, endlessly curly hair hanging in front of his brow.I knew he’d been watching us through the panes.He was prone to lurking.
I blinked a few times as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.The entire kepen was built from black basalt stone cut into neat blocks.Even with ample candlelight, the blackness of the walls made every room feel shadowy.“I passed.”
“How can you be sure?”Dayne leapt off the ledge onto the stone floor and took a few quick steps to my side, unburdened by the weight of iron.
“Because there was only one right answer to each question.”
And then we just stood there, looking at each other, knowing and being confused.Sensing and wishing.Not in any sort of way—I’ve heardthoserumours, too.Dayne, even though he was a year younger than me, was simply my only friend at the time, which is a sad thing to write, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.Even our younger siblings, of which there were four, including two other girls, weren’t our friends.They were spies for our mother or else tragic little beings, free, but not for long.
People always said Dayne was a sour child, but I don’t think that’s fair.He was simply smarter than the rest of us.He saw the trap we were all in.He maybe also had a stronger sense for what was right and wrong outside of what our order prescribed.I think this tormented him.If you’re someone who considers the stars, I can tell you he was born just after the height of summer, and I have heard such people are prone to suffering on behalf of others.You’ve likely heard about Dayne as well.All I can say is that I had no sense of what he was capable of when I was a young woman living with him, and I expect if the world had been kinder to him, he would have been kinder to it.
