Page 39 of Into the West

Which meant he wanted a soothing story without anything bad in it. He and Isla had set up this pattern—he told adventure stories and funny stories. She told soothing stories and things that weren’t actually “stories,” but more family history. That way if something had happened, and they wanted reassurance at bedtime, they could get it by asking for “Mama” instead of saying “nothing scary,” and possibly incurring teasing from a sibling.

“All right then, off you go.” But first, each of them got a good, solid hug and a kiss. When there was no chance of an Imperial spy catching wind of such “softness” toward their children, that was how all Valdemars had been raised. Not everyone in the Empire did that. Child-rearing among the nobly born and wealthy of the Empire ranged from “turn them over to servants and tutors until they are nearly adult,” through what Kordas’s father had done, with side passages for those who treated their boys like tiny army recruits and schooled their girls from the time they were old enough to reach a tabletop in how to run a household and how to make the utmost of their looks. There might be plenty of contact with parents, but it was all in the role of “parent as pedagogue” rather than Mama and Papa.

Well, my lads are getting a mix, like I got. Mama and Papa in the morning and night, and off for instructions and useful work by day. I don’t think they’ll come to harm with that.

“Come on, my little ferrets,” Isla said, and ushered them into the rear of the barge and their room.

He got a notebook he’d made out of a spare account book down out of the overhead cupboard where it had been wedged in among other books he and Isla felt needed to be kept close at hand. With it was his precious graphite marker encased in three layers of waxed string. Graphite was fragile, but using a pen and ink in a barge was perilous, and lead didn’t leave a strong enough mark. He started as he always did, going back over yesterday’s notes to make sure things that he’d noted would need handling had been dealt with—or at least a start had been made. Then, using the tiniest writing he could manage, he carefully added to his notes. Mostly it had to do with keeping supplies balanced along the convoy—he had underlings all along the migration to keep eyes on their particular sections, so he reckoned that as long as they were being honest with him, no one was going to come crying favoritism.

The only reason we have food as good as we do is because of the cook, not the supplies.

Their cook from the manor, who had elected to come with them rather than returning to serve the new master, could wring the least little bit of flavor out of anything he was given, and his two under-cooks were just as good.

“Food is about the most important thing for morale on this escape.” He could still hear his father saying that, for what must have been the fiftieth time. And the old man had been right. As long as people were out of the weather and warm enough—

Ha. He paused to make a note. Collect all the fleeces, and distribute them to be used as mattresses for people too poor to have one. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to be doing any spinning and weaving on this trip. Knitting, yes, but not weaving, and you needed a clean fleece for spinning anyway, which these were not. Fleeces they’d shaved from sheep about to be slaughtered for food would make a big difference in warmth and comfort the colder it got.

He made a few more notes while Isla’s voice murmured at the back of the boat. The lads must have been extra tired today, because he felt the barge move as she rose, and heard her quiet footsteps as she came forward. He looked up at smiled at her. “What do you think about distributing fleeces as mattresses?” he asked.

“Well, actually, that would empty out quite a few storage barges,” she said. “And if someone wanted to take the effort to sandwich a fleece between two pieces of fabric, they’d have a very nice wool-stuffed comforter.” She tilted her head to the side. “Are you getting any pushback about all the common-sharing we’ve been doing?”

“Me personally? No. And my subordinates in their ‘villages’ have a standard answer: You knew this was going to happen when we left Crescent Lake. If you don’t like it, we’ll get a horse and a mage to take you and all your people and beasts and supplies to the other side of the river and you can settle there and won’t have to share anything.” He thought that had been a rather elegant solution. People could live for several years just in the barges. It wouldn’t be elegant or comfortable, but they could do it while they were building proper houses. And this wasn’t the best land for farming or herding, but it wasn’t barren, and people should be able to hack out a nice little village not unlike the one they had disturbed when they first crossed. Of course, that would largely depend on how many other people in their respective strings they could convince to stay as well. Anyone who wasn’t strictly beholden to the complainer . . . well . . . they weren’t farming rented land anymore, and for some, that was the only thing tying them to a less-than-pleasant landlord.

The social order had got turned right around. It didn’t matter how rich you had been now. Money was useless for the moment. What mattered was whether you were generous with the things your money had bought for this trip, and whether you yourself were demonstrating useful skills to the betterment of those around you. Kindness was currency.

That was why the Squire’s children had been so welcome in their respective part of the convoy. And why certain other people had seen which way the wind was blowing and elected to go back to the lives they’d known in Valdemar.

“Empty storage barges can hold frozen fish and meat as soon as the weather gets cold enough,” he observed. “And firewood now. And maybe fodder, if the ravenous herds leave anything behind.”

Isla tilted her head at Rose, who was standing like an abandoned scarecrow in the corner. “Rose? Can you please relay that to the Dolls at the supply barges holding the fleeces, and to the supply masters and the Captain of the Page Army? And tell the “mayors” to identify people who will need the fleeces. Then the lads can run fleeces to the right folks.”

“Already done, Lady Isla,” Rose said calmly.

“Are we going to put some noses out of joint here?” Kordas asked her, as she sat down at the tiny table with him.

She laughed. “Not if we don’t clean the fleeces first. They are loaded with lanolin, which does not have a particularly nice smell. They’re full of twigs and bits of leaves, and probably some sheep shit.”

That last startled an involuntary chuckle out of him, and she smiled.

“Anyway, no one used to a prosperous life is going to want to sleep on something like that, and neither they nor their servants are going to know how to clean a fleece or want to. So no, the poor will be grateful and the prosperous will feel sorry for the poor who have to sleep on smelly fleeces.” She paused. “They’ll smell like sheep, of course, but I don’t think they’ll mind. And of course, they always have the option to clean the things. No?”

“Yes,” he agreed. And after all, if the better off saw the worse off laboring away cleaning their “free” fleeces, they’d be far less inclined to think that the “free” fleeces were actually worth anything.

I swear, leading this expedition takes more diplomacy and maneuvering than living in the Imperial Court. Then he smiled to himself. But it’s a lot more pleasant. These are mostly people who are trying to live together and become a community, not that den of infighting and throat-cutting that the Court was.

Well, this was as good a time as any to tell her he’d put her baby sister in deadly danger. “The base camp scouts had an . . . incident,” he began.

“Well, since you are not telling me that Delia is dead, in pieces, in need of seven Healers, insane, ran off with scary forest-people, or is deserting the scouts to run back here, I assume everything worked out,” she replied, much calmer than he’d ever expected she’d be. “So, since I am not going to scream at you, or tear your scalp off for putting her in danger, what are the details?” she continued, cocking her head to the side not unlike Rose did. Has she always done that? Or did she pick it up from Rose? Or did Rose get it from her?

As briefly and lightly as he could, he gave her the basic details. She nodded with what appeared to be satisfaction at Delia’s solution for the monster lizard-bear, and actually smiled—another reaction he had not expected—at the fact that Delia had exerted herself until she passed out cold.

“You’re taking this well,” he said tentatively.

“Having her remain with us was not an option.” She rested her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. “I know you know that, just as I know you recognized her infatuation with you, and that was why you sent her off with the scouts. An infatuation that runs deep enough can render somebody useless, and make everyone around them miserable. I am not sure you realized that with you there to think about, she wasn’t thinking about much of anything else. She was going to remain a lovesick girl as long as she was here. Out there—” Isla waved vaguely with her free hand in the direction of “upstream,” “—she has been forced to turn outward instead of inward. And that’s going to make her grow up. I don’t know if it’s going to cure her infatuation, but that’s not on either of us. I do know she becomes less of a girl with everything she has to handle out there. And that’s as it should be.”

“She couldn’t stay here,” he agreed flatly. “If we were still back home, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but—”

She held up her hand. “You don’t need to tell me that. Oh, I think we are going to have to deal with Lord Hayworth’s household sooner rather than later.”