Page 20 of Valdemar

Kordas and Isla had just settled down together in the relative quiet of their chambers. Not in bed, although he rather wished they were—but it was still early enough that people might turn up with something Kordas needed to address. Too early for it to be possible for them to get away with “Disturbing our rest is high treason! Begone, villain!”—which was as much of a joke as “Tonight we eat pork!” but was still actually funny most of the time. But although the furniture was still extremely sparse, Kordas had had a bright notion when they’d moved from the Hawkbrother dwellings into the manor, and one of the first things he’d commissioned was a conversion from a leaking rowboat to a sort of settle. The boat had been sanded and waxed until it glowed, the seats taken out; then the whole boat had been brought into the room, permanently affixed to stands so it wouldn’t move or tip over, and lined with a wool mattress, with a featherbed atop that mattress, and furnished with furs and some of the fanciest cushions, blankets, and coverlets they’d brought from home. Then a short set of steps had been attached to the side for climbing in. Set up in front of the fire, it made a grand spot for the two of them to cuddle up together of an evening. The idea proved to be very popular, so popular that eventually Kordas had had to call a halt to the commandeering of rowboats, lest they run out of boats they actually needed on the river. “Build your own,” he’d decreed. “Remember, they don’t actually have to be able to float!” He’d thought about decreeing that only leaking boats could be appropriated, but that opened the door to people purposefully sneaking down to the boathouses to put holes in the damned things.

The innovation, though, had led to people making all sorts of seating arrangements out of boat-like shapes, from chairs made of coracles to beds that hung from the ceiling and actually rocked. Apparently some people had enjoyed the rocking motion of the canal boats and missed it, but that was a bit too precarious for his liking. Hakkon was campaigning to have a bed of that sort. For now, Kordas was limiting him to a hammock swung over the safety of his bed. If he goes a year without falling out, then he can have his boat-bed hung from the ceiling.

It made a grand spot to share a book. For a birthday present a few years ago, Restil had given a try at woodworking, making a lampstand that was attached to the prow and curved over the top, so the glow from a lamp with a mage-light in it fell just perfectly on the page.

Kordas read faster than Isla did—a hazard of having to read so many official documents—so sharing a book with her was an exercise in patience, but Kordas was not about to complain. After all, time spent with a slow reader was a longer time in the person’s company. Besides, she’d only admonish him not to rush, and point out that he was missing half the book. It was not a terribly inspiring book—actually, it was a treatise on mining—but any book was better than no book. This was one of the new copies that Delia and Alberdina had had made, and given the discovery of copper and zinc in their iron mine, Kordas was rather keen to know more about mining and smelting now.

The windows were open, and gauze screens had been fastened into the frames to keep bugs out. Crickets and a few night-birds sang, frogs croaked down on the river and toads in the garden, and some night-blooming flower sent its perfume in on the breeze. The only thing that would have been better would have been a gentle rain. They didn’t get a lot of these peaceful evenings, and Kordas was relishing the quiet, when someone tapped on the door.

Because of course they couldn’t have a peaceful early-summer evening without someone interrupting it. That was what happened when you were a leader, after all.

Then again, that intruder could only be one of a handful of people that the guards outside all knew, because otherwise the guard would have interrogated the visitor and determined whether their business was urgent enough to disturb the Baron, then would have poked a head inside and asked if he wanted to see the person in question. All three of the boys were in their own rooms, puttering or reading, so it wasn’t one of them.

But Delia had volunteered to walk the wall a bit with Lythe Shadowdancer, and she had probably had had enough time by now to have gotten something useful—or at least informative—out of the girl, so it was probably her. If so . . . good. He hoped whatever Delia had learned would throw a better light on the girl than he had now.

“Come!” he said, as Isla put a sprig of pressed rosemary in the book by way of a bookmark.

It was indeed Delia, and as she entered, closed the door behind her, and came into the lamplight, Kordas could tell she had news. “Join us in the stern,” he invited, since he and Isla were in the prow, and nothing loath, she popped into the boat with them, folding her legs underneath her.

Kordas considered that the last ten years had made a definite improvement in her. She’d risen to every challenge, didn’t complain of their hardships any more than Isla did—and always with good reason and usually just to vent frustration. And best of all, from his point of view, that infatuation she’d had with him had withered and died a much-deserved death. From being a conventionally pretty and a little bit aimless girl, she’d turned into a handsome, strong woman with equally strong opinions and plenty of ideas of her own—a great many of them damned good ones. One of the best, in his opinion, was that she’d begun over the past couple of years to develop an interest in Beltran, Kordas’s Herald, and the interest was mutual. And much more appropriate than a pash for her own brother-in-law.

Gone were the pretty gowns, stowed away in storage. Now she wore the tunic and trews of hemp canvas everyone else did, with a bit of horsehair finger-braiding she’d done herself by way of trim. Valdemar Gold hair, of course, so it actually looked like gold-thread trimming. She’d never been what he would have called “soft,” but she was definitely tougher now, her cheekbones and chin more defined. Like Isla, she wore her golden-brown hair in a practical braid wrapped around her head.

“Well!” she said, brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “I’ve heard both sides of Lythe’s story now, and I am rather glad to report that Lythe Shadowdancer is not the wet mess we all thought she was. Or at least, she’s not the dreary little brat I thought she was.”

“That’s a blessing,” Isla said dryly. “Because the side of the story we’ve heard so far doesn’t paint a very flattering picture.”

“Well, let me tick things down for you.” Delia wriggled a little to settle herself in. “First of all, pre-curse, she wasn’t entirely running off at night to cavort with her friends. There was some of that, yes, but her friends had plenty of jobs of their own to do, and parents who’d yank them right out of bed by the foot if they didn’t rise with the rest of the family to get their work done, so while they were probably staying up later than they should have been, it wasn’t ever past midnight. No, once everyone else had gone to bed, she stayed awake because she had begun to see spirits, and she didn’t want to tell anyone about what she saw, not even her mother, after her mother dismissed what she was saying.”

That made Kordas sit up and take notice. “Ghost spirits?” he asked.

“I talked about that with her. We don’t think so. She says they don’t look much like humans. We think they are some kind of elementals. Like vrondi. They might even be vrondi, since I have no idea what a vrondi looks like to someone who can see its native form. They didn’t seem to be aware that she could see them, so she pretended she didn’t so that she could watch them covertly. As I said, she tried to say something to her mother about this, but her mother just told her she was too old to be making up tales and having invisible friends. Although why her mother would have just shrugged that off when they’re living in the Pelagirs, I have no idea.”

Isla sighed. “Most probably because she didn’t demonstrate this ability as a child—and now her mother assumed she was making things up so she could play all night.”

Delia nodded. “Her friends didn’t believe her either, although you’d think they’d all be prepared to believe just about anything.”

“I suppose it was one of those cases of, ‘No one has ever seen anything like you’re talking about before now, so it can’t be real.’” Isla pursed her lips. “Or . . . the universal tendency to see a lovely girl or woman and assume she has a head full of air.”

“A little bit of both, perhaps. She was trying to figure out what she should do about this when she and her mother had that fight. That was partly what the fight was about, in fact. Her mother demanded that she ‘stop seeing things,’ as if it was all under her control. Oh, and something else that came out of that fight was that her mother wanted her to settle right down, right then, and ‘catch’ a husband prosperous enough to take care of all three of them, and this staying out all night was really putting a spoke in the wheels of that plan. There was a lot of ‘I sacrificed everything to raise you, now it’s your turn to take care of me.’ Apparently people were starting to talk, and assuming she was meeting someone clandestinely when she was out and not with her friends.”

“Hrm. I think that’s probably the root of the fight,” Isla replied, brows creased. “Danger to her reputation, because who knows what she was doing or who she was finagling about with—and, sad to say, her mother probably was counting on her to marry well from the time it was obvious that she was going to be beautiful.” Kordas sighed at that. Common problem. Highborn or low, some people looked on their children as property to be disposed of as the parent chose—and in the case of a beautiful girl, counted on that girl to be the source of future prosperity, and became incensed when the girl didn’t follow their wishes. Shouting and fights ensued . . . and often beatings and other punishments.

Delia nodded. “So that puts Lythe in a somewhat better light, and her mother . . . well, was not perfect, let’s just say to be generous.” Delia twisted a lock of hair that had come loose from the braid at the back of her head in one finger. “I don’t think she’s making any of that up, about seeing things. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a person would make up. She didn’t gain anything by it, and not even the boys who were courting her believed it. In fact, she said it put some of them off. As for her mother, well, she says that when she asked, ‘But what about love?’ her mother replied, ‘Love is for rich people. And you can learn to love a rich man just as easily as a poor one.’ Which sounds about right.”

“That does put things in a very different light. Why didn’t she tell all this to the Tayledras?” Kordas asked.

“Because they terrified her. And they were all—rightfully, given his Gifts—concentrating on Rothas, and trying to break his enchantment so at least he’d stop broadcasting misery. Rothas does believe her, by the way. Everything about the Tayledras terrified her—the bondbirds, the casual use of magic everywhere, the way they lived, the hertasi . . . I mean, I can completely understand that. When you live in a tiny village in the Pelagirs, almost everything having to do with magic is suspect, because most of it is bad.” Delia shook her head. “And no one was particularly interested in trying to coax anything out of her, or keep her company, so once she and Rothas were in the Vale, she spent most of her waking hours in or near the sleeping space they’d been allotted, all alone, with Rothas next to her as insensible as a stone. The nocturnal Tayledras were all out with their owls, doing what the Hawkbrothers do, and the hertasi reacted to the fact that she was afraid of them by avoiding her so she wouldn’t be afraid.”

Kordas chuckled and replied, “Ho, they’ll do that if you aren’t ready for them. Incredibly quick, then utterly still.”

“And wonderful. I miss them,” Delia confided. “A lot. Anyway, as long as we can keep the shocks ‘good’ ones, Lythe can handle it, I think.”

Isla softened visibly. “Now I feel rather bad for thinking what I did about her.”

“Me too,” Kordas admitted. “I didn’t need to be that harsh, but—”

“But we all assumed that because she is beautiful, she is a spoiled child.” Delia nodded. “Honestly, brother, we’re so used to how beautiful highborn girls are spoiled, we just assume the same is true for every girl that’s pretty. Plus all those songs about haughty village beauties who scorn poor shepherd boys.”