Valdyis galsin

Merain and Imri hung around while I finished the milking, and then Merain said “we’re going now, we can’t risk the doctors meddling again”. He’d gathered all the leftover food, and Imri had a purse full of money, I don’t know whether she’d run home to get it or had it with her all along.

“I can’t go away without telling Grandmother,” I said, “but I promise I’ll talk to her only.” I knew she was likely to be up, and so she was, in her rocking-chair in the little bright room off the kitchen.

“I’m off to Turenay right now,” I said, “with Imri and Merain.”

“Guild trouble tonight, eh?” she asked. “Take this.” She got a little linen-wrapped package from among the cushions of her chair, about the size of an egg. “Give that to the masters in Turenay and you’ll be all right. Blessings on you.”

And then I was outside again, and we were on the road. Before long we were in the next village — not Woodbridge, where we’d been to the harvest feast, but in the other direction where I’d never been. There were the remains of a Midsummer fire there, with some people still asleep around it, and a couple of young men raking up the embers while singing to Anshen. I sang along in my head but didn’t stop to join in. A bit further on we sat down on the bank of a brook and ate our bread and cheese. I showed Grandmother’s package to the others and Merain said “it looks like a master’s ribbon!” which I didn’t understand, because it didn’t look like a ribbon at all!

“Grandmother says to give it to the masters in Turenay,” I said, “so I know it’s something to do with masters. Do you know where Turenay is?”

Imri had seen it on a map, and Merain knew it was in the east. “When we get to the big road we have to turn east and then we can’t miss it,” he said.

It was getting warm. We came through another village, where a small girl was herding geese and two big shaggy dogs ran after us barking until we left the village on the other side. Good thing that Merain had left his dog with the goats or we’d have had a dog-fight! Then we came to the big road — sandy like the small one — and turned east on it.

It was getting warmer, and we were thirsty. The brook was far away now. We slogged on for a while, until a wagon caught up with us. “Hey, youngsters! Would you want a ride?”

Yes, we would! We were hot and tired and dry and the carter looked friendly. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Turenay,” we said.

“That’s a long way! How many water-sacks have you got with you?” We’d forgotten to bring any. We were so used to the brook being near! “Never mind, hop on.” He gave us an earthenware mug, full of water from a barrel on the back of the wagon.

“Those are pretty donkeys,” I said. They were large and dun-coloured, with big soft ears and long faces.

“Mules, their mother was a horse,” the man said. “Sandy and Ashy, I call them. I’m Jichan.”

We said our names, and I heard Imri swallowing her house-name. Of course she’s used to giving strangers her full name!

Well, we’d thought that it was at most a couple of days to Turenay, but even on the wagon it was a couple of weeks. The wagon was full of wool: spun yarns, some plain and some dyed, to get to the weavers so they could make cloth and ribbons in time to sell at the autumn fair.

Imri parted with some of her money to buy two more water barrels and food for everybody in a village, and later we stopped at an inn and she paid for us get a large meal and to sleep in the hayloft. Not that there was much hay left at the height of summer! But we had a quiet place and a blanket each.

Jichan let only Merain help with the mules, though I’d have loved to get my hands on a brush! But at the inn there were chickens and sheep and a couple of cows and I helped with feeding and milking. And in the night the innkeeper came to wake me up. “I’ve seen that you’re good with animals. My best cow is calving and I don’t think it’s going right.”

So there I was with my arms in a cow almost to the shoulders! I had to turn the calf, and when I was doing that I felt that there were two! After a while they were standing on their spindly legs and the cow was standing around with a very cowish “what do I care” expression on her face. “Bull calves, both,” I said.

The innkeeper scowled. “One of them will be in the pot before the week is up,” she said.

“Take this one, then, the other one is stronger, he’ll make a fine ox.”

She looked at me as if she hadn’t seen me before. “You’re a real farm girl, right? Jichan thinks you and your friend are noble girls running away from home.” I didn’t tell her about Imri, of course, but I said “yes, I’m a real farm girl, I could milk a sheep when I was six and a cow when I was nine, but now I’m off to school. In Turenay. You know, I’m not even sure any more that Turenay exists.”

“Oh, it does, Jichan goes there every so often with his wagon. It’s a good thing you met up with him, he’s completely trustworthy,” she said, but we already knew that.

(Somewhere along the way I told Merain about milking the mouse, and showed him when he looked as if he didn’t believe me, and he said “don’t ever do that again or I might hit you!” “What, milk a mouse?” I said, but he meant show him something without warning. Fair enough. And anyway, my hands are too big now to milk any mice.)

I sat on the wall for a bit after the doctors had gone back to the Stone House with Imri and my brother and sister to our house, just to be alone. But I wasn’t alone for long! Merain sat down next to me. He didn’t speak right away, though, only when I greeted him.

“Hey,” he said, “there’s the dance at the Stone House tomorrow, but would you like to come to the tower instead and have the wake with me? Imri will be there too. And probably Jeran, and the doctors might come later. I know you’re all of the Nameless, but I don’t care. I’ve got stuff to eat, and Imri is bringing wine.”

I liked that! A really good excuse not to be at the dance under Imri’s father’s eyes. “I’ll bring cheese and strawberries,” I said, because those were so plentiful at our house that they wouldn’t be missed. I went home glowing with pleasure, crawled into bed beside Arvi, and in the morning after milking I started filling a bucket: a cheese in a cloth, a knife to cut it with, a good picking of ripe strawberries.

Suddenly Grandmother appeared in the doorway. “So, you’re going up the mountain tonight?”

“You’ve heard? Merain asked me.”

“Do you intend to come back alone or will there be two of you?”

It was a while until I understood what she meant. “Of course I’ll come back alone! Well, or with Imri. Merain and I are friends but not that kind of friends.”

Grandmother nodded. “I just wanted to make sure.”

I thought about what Arni had said to me earlier, that I had to see some more of the world before I decided to stay in the village. “Grandmother? Next time when you go to the market, can I come? I can drive the ox-cart.”

“I’ll see,” she said. She was gone as quickly as she’d come. I covered the bucket with a cloth and put it with the milk buckets so it would be easy to grab, then went to help prepare the village for the feast.

In the middle of the day I found myself doing something together with Arni, while Hylti went to talk to Grandmother carrying her notebook. She was going to write down everything that Grandmother knew about the village and was willing to tell her, I’m sure! I don’t know how it came up, but I said at some point that I was glad I had something to be already and I didn’t need to choose an apprenticeship. “And I don’t want to be a priestess of Naigha either.”

“Why not?” Arni asked.

That was a hard question to answer. “I can teach my little sister things but I couldn’t teach a whole classroom full of children,” I said.

“That’s not the right reason.”

“And –” it became harder, “– I think I like life better than death. Animals. Growing things.”

“That’s not the right reason either. Priestesses of Naigha deal with life a lot too, and farmers with death!”

(Now I realise I should have said that Naigha hasn’t called me, but I didn’t think of that then.)

Towards evening Imri came from the Stone House, carrying a basket. “Coming?” We went up the hill, but before we even got to Merain’s house we saw his father standing in the middle of the road. “Evening, master,” I said, though his face looked like nine days of storm.

“Did my son invite you?” he asked.

“He did,” we said. I wanted to ask “Do you disapprove?” but didn’t, and that was a good thing.

“I shall guard all of you,” he said, and let us pass.

“Thank you,” I called over my shoulder, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention to us any more.

Merain was already in the tower, with his dog (I scratched the dog’s ruff and made it wag its tail at me), and he’d made a fire that a small goat was roasting over. “Sorry I started the fire already,” he said, “but otherwise we’d have had to wait much too long for the meat! And I used my tinderbox, because I can’t light a fire with my mind. Can you?”

“No,” I said, “I tried, but I can’t.”

“I’ve never even tried,” Imri said.

Then we got talking, all about the gods, and about the Guilds, not as enemies, but as people who each want to know what the others think and why they think it. That’s a good kind of talking, and it can really only be done in the dark, when your friend is sleeping over or at the Midsummer wake. We forgot to eat and drink until the smell of well-done goat was too delicious to ignore, and then Merain tore strips of meat off and put it in some flatbread he’d brought.

As we were eating we saw that there was something going on outside, flickering light as if something was on fire, so we looked out. Merain’s father was standing in the road, his arms spread out, and there was a whole wall of fire on both sides of him. “You’re not coming through!” he said to someone we couldn’t see.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Merain said, “but it’s nothing good. Let’s hold hands.”

That made us feel a lot safer. We all knew how to protect ourselves, and we did that, and the power came together and raised a ghostly tower on the bit of wall that was still there! And that made us feel safer still. But then the fire went out and there was a big man in heavy boots coming in our direction. “It’s my uncle Radan astin Eraday!” Imri said.

“Your uncle?” I thought for a moment that it was the uncle she’d talked about earlier, but that uncle had been Jichan.

“We’re Hayan, everybody is family.” The big man was just outside the ghostly tower now, looking angry. He pointed a finger at Merain. “You,” he said. “I thought we had an arrangement, little one.” (Merain was the biggest of the three of us! Tall, and broad as well.) “And I see you’ve brought in some girls. They’re of no import.”

“I owe you nothing,” Merain said. I stood up straight and put my hand on my knife but the man ignored me completely. I was much more angry than afraid! But I was afraid too.

Our ghostly tower was so strong that he couldn’t get through! We made a circle with our arms around the others’ shoulders and made it stronger still. Now we noticed that there were rather a lot of goats here (but without Jeran), all getting in the way, and Merain’s dog was getting confused because it didn’t know what to do with the goats when there was no room to herd them.

“I need Archan,” Merain said. “Is he inside or outside?”

I could tell that there were gods present, but not where they were! Then suddenly a boy stood between me and Imri, looking about Imri’s age, who looked first at her and then at me and said “I can’t speak to you any more and you are too old for me really! But my brothers are both outside.” And he disappeared. I could see Anshen and the Nameless now: two young men looking almost the same, one just a little more handsome than the other, but I didn’t know which was which.

“Timoine just told me they’re both outside,” I said to Merain, who nodded grimly. “We’ll have to hold out,” he said. “Say, if we come out of this, let’s go to Turenay or Valdis, the three of us. Never mind the gods.”

Then the doctors suddenly stood outside the tower, and we didn’t see Uncle Radan any more. “Let them in?” I asked, and we made a gap in the ghostly wall and they came through, all between the goats.

The priestess of Naigha had been behind the doctors and she beckoned Merain over. “You will have to come with me into the cave in the morning,” she said.

Merain was whiter than I’d ever seen him. “He fought for you,” the priestess said. “He died for you.” He nodded but didn’t say anything, obviously not trusting his voice. Imri and I put our arms around his shoulders again.

“Who did he fight?” I asked. I was afraid it was the Nameless, but it had been Uncle Radan.

“He was a grand master in the Guild,” Arni said, “and Merain’s father only a master, he had to give way.”

“That’s not fair!” I started to say, but then I remembered that I couldn’t expect servants of the Nameless to be fair.

Hylti, meanwhile, was very interested in the tower itself. “I knew there was an eight-sided tower here!”

“I didn’t tell!” I said. “It was Merain’s family secret. I didn’t betray him!”

“No, you didn’t,” Hylti said, “your grandmother told me. She’s known about the tower all her life.”

Arni led us all out of the tower to the summer meadow, the goats following. Jeran appeared too and took charge of the goats, leaving the dog to comfort Merain. “Let’s finish the wake here,” Arni said. I had the bucket but Imri had left her basket in the tower, so we had cheese and strawberries but nothing to drink until someone got water from the stream.

Merain took me and Imri aside. “After tonight we’re all like brother and sisters,” he said, “I want you to come into the burial place with me.”

“If Naigha doesn’t mind,” I said, and we asked the priestess, and she asked Naigha, and it was all right.

There had been stars earlier, but now it was completely dark. Arni was looking towards the hill as if she was waiting, and then there was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder and something that looked like a very quick fire. “Ha!” Arni said. “I was waiting for that. Good riddance. The Nameless takes care of his own.”

“Did he kill Radan astin Eraday?” I asked, aghast. “His own servant?”

“His useless servant,” Arni said. And then it was day, and time for milking, but I was still confused even though cows are very calming.

 

 

 

When I looked up from my pail Aine was gone, and instead the shorter preacher was leaning against the fence, chewing a stalk of grass. “Hi,” I said, “where did you leave your babies?”

“At the Stone House, with Arni, asleep,” she said. “Can you show me around the village?”

I could! I had to wait for the cream to rise before I could skim the milk anyway. I put the pail with the other one, covered it, gave my skirt and headscarf a pull and then I was ready to show her around. “I want to know where everybody lives,” she said, “and to see if they’re healthy.”

Then I thought of telling her my name, which I hadn’t done at the house, and Lord Arin hadn’t called me by it either. Then the preacher told me that she was called Hylti, and that they weren’t preachers at all but nurses and apprentice doctors! Hylti had been to school in Turenay and helped in the hospital, and she’d met Arni in Valdis when Arni had still been with the Nameless. Arni was from Rizenay! That was why she was so tall and light-haired, most people from Rizenay are, Grandmother says.

Showing Hylti around was easy and fun! We went to Jeran’s house first. He wasn’t in, but Hylti looked into the house and found it neat and clean. I could have told her that: Jeran is neat and clean! We could see him sitting with his back against a tree, knitting, while the goats roamed the hillside. He came when I called him and was kind of amused when Hylti wanted to see his bare pecker. “It’s not often a woman wants to see that!” I wandered away for a bit, no need for me to see Jeran’s bare pecker, and found a cat to scritch behind the ears while Hylti worked.

“Right,” I heard her say, “you should go to the market once in a while, meet other people than the village! Experience, that’s what you need.” I didn’t catch what Jeran answered but it sounded cheerful.

The next house was the scary man of the Nameless! I realised that I didn’t even know his name, only of his son, Merain, who was a couple of years older than me. Hylti took Merain into a side-room of the workshop first. It wasn’t long until he came out to talk to me.

I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, it was just talk, because it turned out that though we both thought the other was of the Nameless we sort of liked each other. “Do you want to see our family secret?” he asked. I only nodded — he must really like me, and trust me, if he offered that! And then he took me up the hill some way and opened a hole in the bracken that I hadn’t seen was there — it was a miracle that goats didn’t fall into it! — and jumped down, and handed me down too.

We were on a flagstone floor, inside a bit of brick wall, and the wall was eight-sided! And as I stood there I could imagine, I saw in my mind’s eye, the tower it had been. “That’s why we live here,” Merain said, “it’s been entrusted to our family, to take care of Archan’s tower.” Then he took me back to the house and, before his father or Hylti could see us, gave me a beautifully carved bone comb that he had in his pocket. “That’s a secret too,” he said.

Hylti had a lot to say to Merain’s father, but eventually we were on the road again. “You have a stone bridge here, right?” she asked. “Is it old?”

“I think so,” I said, “there are carvings of people and animals on it but they’re all worn.”

When we got to the bridge Hylti plunged into the water! It wasn’t deep — they’d probably come by the ford where it was really shallow, but even here the water came only halfway up her thighs at the deepest spot. That was a good thing, because she took out some sheets of paper and a charcoal stick and did something with it that I couldn’t see on the underside of the bridge, then gave me one paper after another, and the people and animals were on it, clearer than they were on the bridge itself! I was sure it wasn’t a drawing, it wasn’t in lines, but all in black and white patches. “How do you make those?” I asked, and she showed me on a bit that I could see, lay the paper flat on the carvings and rub the charcoal on it so the high bits came out in black. “That’s clever!” I said.

She finished — I think she got pictures of the whole bridge — and climbed out of the water, dripping wet. Fortunately she was wearing a short skirt so only the hem was wet! “I wrote a book about bridges in Lenyas,” she said, “it’s in the palace library. This one is like those, made by the Ishey.”

“What is the Ishey?” I asked.

“They’re not what, they’re who, people who lived here before the kingdom was the kingdom, more than six hundred years ago, perhaps a thousand years ago. There are still Ishey, but only very few in Valdyas.” She carefully rolled up her papers and put them in her satchel. “I didn’t expect an Ishey bridge here. All it needs is an eight-sided tower now!”

But I didn’t tell her about the eight-sided tower: after all, it was Merain’s family secret that he trusted me with!

When we got to the Temple of Naigha we ran into Farin, wool on his clothes and wool in his hair. Of course, he’d told me he’d go to the far pasture with the shepherds and help round up the herd so we could start shearing right after the Feast. “You stink of sheep,” I said.

“You stink of the Nameless!”

I shrugged. “I’ve been talking to Merain. Up the hill.”

“Do you fancy him?”

“No! But I sort of like him, we get on.”

“How long have you been getting on?” (Brothers!)

“Since this afternoon in fact,” I said.

Hylti was in the temple and stayed inside for a long time! Come to think of it she had a braid like a priestess, but hadn’t she said she and Arni were married? And she didn’t dress like a priestess or have snakes on her hands and arms either. Then Arni and Imri came from the Stone House, carrying babies. We sat on the temple-yard wall, Imri and I each holding a baby on our lap while Arni fed the third. “Which of them is whose, or do they all belong to both of you?” I asked.

“They’re all ours, but the one on your lap comes from my belly,” she said. “That’s Ruzyn.”

“But you didn’t make them together!” I said. “You’re both women!”

Arni laughed. “No, but we have friends, two men in Valdis who are together, and they were very obliging.”

I took Imri home to eat with us, because at the Stone House there was a banquet for the doctors and she’d only be bored or embarrassed or both. Then I went to check on the milk, skimmed it, and let Arvi start churning the cream until it became too heavy for her and I had to do the rest. Before I was finished the doctors suddenly stood in the dairy! “It’s your turn now,” they said.

It took a while before I understood what they meant: they were going to check everybody for sickness, us as well! “You can use the little back room,” I said, “if you don’t mind the cheese on the shelves.”

Farin was completely healthy, and so was I, but Hylti scolded Arvi a bit because she could tell by the way she looked that she didn’t eat her vegetables! “If you don’t eat your greens you’re going to have a bent back like a donkey! And legs like a goat! I’m going to tell your mother that she shouldn’t give in when you only want to eat meat and bread.” How did she know? Because that was exactly what happened.

But Imri stayed behind when Farin and Arvi went back to the house, and she beckoned me over. She was sick! And she wasn’t a virgin any more, either. “Who did you make love with?” I asked.

“Nobody!” she said and burst out crying.

Arni put an arm around Imri’s shoulders while I held both her hands. “But someone can have made love with you, or at least pretended to.”

“It’s Uncle Jichan,” Imri said, still sobbing. “You can’t say no to him. When he comes here with my eldest sister. Father doesn’t know, and I’ve tried to tell Mother but she doesn’t ever listen.”

“Where does your Uncle Jichan live?” Hylti asked.

“In Valdis!”

“Well, you’ve got two witnesses now, me and Arni, we can round him up and take him to court. And perhaps you should go to school for a bit.”

“But I’ve already been to school! There’s nothing the priestess can teach me any more.”

“The school I’ve been to,” Hylti said. “In Turenay.”

I’m Venlei Halla and I’m going to tell you about my life.

It’s a good life! I can’t remember ever going to bed hungry except the times that I’ve been sent to bed without my dinner, and that hasn’t happened for a long time now. It’s so much better in our village than in the other villages nearby, we’ve had whole families from the other villages wintering in our barn because they didn’t have enough and we did, even enough for them as well. Perhaps it is because Mother is such a good farmer. She’s good with the land and I’m good with animals. I can milk anything! I even milked a mouse for a bet when I was eleven, and I’ll tell you, it was only one little drop of milk because mice are so tiny, and I let the baby mice lick it off my finger because it was theirs really, but I did it! And people still talk about it. (Serlei Arin may say he can milk an ant, but I don’t think ants give milk at all! They lay eggs, don’t they? Nothing lays eggs and gives milk, it’s either one or the other.)

Our village is Vezenay. The priestess says it’s called Veshinay really, but she went to learn in the big city and everything is different there. Anyway, at least she came back from the big city! Not everybody does who goes there, I think it’s so big that they get lost and never ever come back because they forget how. We have a bit of hill that isn’t very steep and forest and fields and a brook, everything that a village needs! The brewery is upstream and the tannery (which belongs to my father, by the way) is downstream, and in between we get all the water we need and do our washing.

I have a sister, Venla, who is almost seventeen and works in the tannery, she’s engaged to Jilan the carpenter and I think they’ll get married come Midsummer, which is only a few days away! And then there’s me, I’m fourteen, and my brother Farin who is hardly younger than me because we were born at the same birth, but I came out first. When we were smaller we were never apart, we thought the same thoughts even, but a while ago I started turning into a woman and he started turning into a man and it was all so strange! Now it’s like he’s afraid of me, but that’s silly, there’s nothing to be afraid of, I’m still his sister. And there’s Arvi who is ten and Arin who is five. And Grandmother Halla lives with us, she’s Father’s mother, she takes the ox-cart to the market every week with leather and vegetables and cheese so nobody else needs to do that. Grandfather used to do it, but he died a couple of years ago because he was too old to live.

We’re all of Anshen, the whole village, except the scary man on the hillside and his even more scary son who are of the Nameless. The scary man does sell the best tools, combs and spindles and shuttles made of bone! But his son is a wastrel, all he does is eye the girls. I won’t name their names because there are lots of good people who have the same names and I’m not going to sully good names because bad people happen to have them as well.

So today I’d finished all my morning work and I was sitting on the bench outside the kitchen, because it was splendid weather, doing some mending. Jeran the goatherd was there too, he’d finished his milking, and we were talking about the feast and the dancing. He likes boys, and so do I, but not the same boys so there was a lot to talk about.

Suddenly a pair of hands grabbed me around the waist and a pair of lips kissed me on the back of my head! That was Imri, my dearest friend, Lord Arin’s youngest daughter, a couple of years younger than me but you wouldn’t think it, so forward and clever as she is. It’s probably because she’s got four older sisters! And I’ve only got the one. Her sisters are all married and living elsewhere, though. She does have a mother, but nobody’s ever seen her outside of the house, as if she’s afraid of being out of doors or something, I’ve never dared ask.

Imri kissed me on the lips then and said “You’ve been eating bacon! I can taste it!”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s amazing that you’ve still got bacon this late in the year!”

“Mother saved some for the feast,” I said. And even though it wasn’t the feast yet, she’d cut a little piece to have with our breakfast eggs.

Imri pulled me into the house and said, “seriously, about the dancing at our house, Father has noticed you! I thought I’d warn you.”

“I already thought of that,” I said. Lord Arin noticed every girl in the village who grew tits, and I’d been growing tits quite noticeably in the past year! “I’ll stay away from him if I can.”

“You don’t need to stay away! You might get a pair of oxen out of it like Lyse last year.”

I wouldn’t know what to do with a pair of oxen, we have an ox already to pull the wagon, it’s not as if you can milk them! “Your father is forty! Forty-five even! I wish you had a brother, I prefer someone of eighteen, or sixteen! And your father notices all the girls.”

“He doesn’t notice me,” Imri said.

“That’s a good thing, because you’re his daughter! That he doesn’t notice you in that way, I mean.”

Imri nodded. “Right. Like Jeran who was hanged last year because he didn’t know the difference between daughters and other girls. Whose daughter went to the city with the inheritance. But well, I just thought I’d warn you.”

So I gave her the red ribbon I’d been saving for the feast because it was so sweet of her, it suits her better than me anyway because she has brown hair and I have reddish-fair hair, I’ll wear the blue ribbon or the white one if I can wheedle it from Venla. Jeran played hurt, “Imri, you’re disappointing me, I’ve got such a nice ribbon for you!”, taking a bit of goat’s wool out of his shirt. She took it with a laugh, “I like the wool! I’ll put it in my tapestry.”

Mother had something to discuss with Imri too, whispering in a corner, and I couldn’t understand it but it still made me blush. Then Imri said, “have you heard? We’re getting a couple of Anshen preachers for the feast.”

“Preachers? Don’t we know enough about Anshen already?”

“Father says that we know how it is, and they’re going to tell us how it’s going to be! They’re very strict, he says.”

“Well, perhaps they can dance, and they’re handsome!”

“They’re both women, Father says.”

“They could still dance, and be nice to look at!”

Then she went home, and Jeran to his goats, and I went to milk the cows. Then two strange women rode up on shaggy horses, both carrying babies in slings — three babies between them.

“Good morning!” I called, without ceasing to milk.

“Morning — who is the village headman or woman here?”

“That’ll be Lord Arin at the Stone House,” I said, and pointed.

“I wouldn’t have thought there would be a stone house here!” the shorter woman said. (I could see now that one woman was tall and the other short, because they’d dismounted. Also, they weren’t much older than my sister Venla. They didn’t look like I’d imagined preachers but they could hardly be anyone else.)

“Well, it’s not all stone,” I said, because I’m a truthful sort of person. “But there’s some stone so that’s what we call it.”

“Can you take us there?”

“When I finish this cow,” I said, and did so, and then the babies started to cry and they had to feed them so I could do another cow and put the bucket in the scullery with a cloth over it. I got to hold a baby while her mother did up her shirt, and then change the nappy, and the little warm body felt so nice in my arms that I said “I wish I had a little sister like that! My youngest brother is five and obnoxious. May I carry her?”

Yes, you may, I heard in my head. That was strange, it was almost like Farin and me thinking the same thoughts but different! I didn’t have time to think about it much, though, because the women wanted to go to the Stone House now.

When we got there Lord Arin was already in the courtyard, and he took me by the elbow very courteously. We all ended up in Lord Arin’s writing-room, and we all got cups of wine, even me! Lord Arin’s clerk was there too, who was his son by another woman than his wife. (So he can’t only make daughters! See, Imri was wrong when she said that!)

The women were from Three Hills, they said, and Lord Arin thought that was bad news, but they said that the queen had taken care of the lord of Three Hills and he was relieved. It must have been the lord who was bad news! Then there was a lot of talk that I didn’t understand, “investigating the pattern of spread” and things like that, but I rather thought it was about Lord Arin bedding everybody in sight! It became embarrassing after a while even though it was hard not to listen, but I couldn’t get out because by now I had all three babies on my lap and one was investigating my hair and getting tangled in it. But their mothers took them back, and I said “can I go and milk my other three cows now?”

Everybody laughed — I hadn’t said anything funny, had I? — and Lord Arin took me to the gate himself. When we were almost out he looked at my tits, then vaguely at my face, then really at my face, and said, “You should go and talk to the smith’s wife before the Feast. Or to the people on the hillside, if you prefer.”

“The people on the hillside are creepy,” I said.

“Then talk to the smith’s wife,” Lord Arin said, “and she won’t charge you twelve riders.”

“I don’t want to be a smith!” I said. “I want to be a farmer.” But then I realised what he was talking about. “Oh! It wouldn’t be right to pay twelve riders for that, it’s not as if we don’t have it but Grandmother would be annoyed!”

I went back to the cows, and when I was finishing the last one Aine, the smith’s wife, came and sat on the fence next to me. “Lord Arin told me to speak to you,” she said, “I’m to take you as my apprentice after the Feast.”

Well, I’ll see what that comes to! And I wonder if she wants Farin too, we’re so alike even though we’ve grown apart lately.