I wish I remembered who offered Mernath as an example of what happens when someone who is intrinsically absolutely good gets in with the wrong side. It sounds like Airath. The next morning my jaw felt like nothing had ever happened to it. When I got to the workshop it was Jichan opening up, “it’s Cynla’s late morning”, he said, but Cynla came from upstairs as soon as I was in and started to put bread and cheese and small beer on the table. I’d eaten some bread from home on the way, but I didn’t mind another breakfast! “It’s only a half-day,” Master Mernath said, “so let’s get in some practice!” And he showed Cynla how a sword was put together and let her make different sorts of pins to attach the blade to the hilt, and Jichan and Jeran and I got more sharp edges to do. The master must earn a lot from the things he finishes if he can afford to let us do so much work that doesn’t bring in money! At the end of the morning he told us to stop working and took a bit of steel, about the size for a knife, […]

Ashti took me home from the temple of Dayati. Well, not at once, because we were talking about what Doctor Airath had said about Arni, and Ashti thought it would be a good thing to ask Doctor Cora for the money. After all she was the owner of the brothel! The children that our children had been playing with asked if they’d come again, and we said “perhaps you should come to our house to play next time! Wade in the river, catch fishes!” A little boy said that it was all right to catch fishes, but they’d have to put them back, because you didn’t eat fishes! Well, we’d catch our fishes for eating another time. “Let’s go to Doctor Cora right away,” Ashti said. “She lives next to the Guild school, doesn’t she?” We didn’t even have trouble finding it, we were getting to know our way around Turenay. We got to a little square where there was a fountain that made me laugh and Ashti blush: a copper statue of a girl lifting her skirt and pissing water! “She needs a piss-pot,” Arvin said, and when I asked Raisse and Sidhan if they could piss standing up […]

Fudged the smelting and cooling a bit because of course molten steel takes hours to cool down enough to forge. Research is a wonderful thing but it does mess up a good story. We had been living and working in Turenay for a couple of days, and suddenly Vurian wasn’t at dinner! Lady Rava knew all about it. “I’ve told him that whoever goes to school should sleep at the school, unless they’re married, then they have to find a place to live together. My house isn’t a hostel for noble students!” And to Mialle she said, “And as for you, you can live at the school too if you like, but in the girls’ dorm, or find a place in town to live on your own. Perhaps your master can put you up.” I knew what was coming, but Ashti and I had been talking about it already. “We’d much rather be on our own as well,” I said. “We lived above the school in Valdis.” “Master Fian and his wife live above the school here,” Lady Rava said, “but perhaps they know a place to live.” “Across the bridge would be cheapest,” Ashti said, “and I know from […]

Sometimes we say “all our campaigns end up either at court or in Turenay”. This time it’s both. After the Feast of Anshen it was back to work. I was still plodding through the pile, Mialle was making beautiful things, and Vurian followed the hospital doctors around. The epidemic was over but he was still running himself ragged, and Mialle worried about him a lot but she tried not to show it when they were together. Only Ashti had no work to do because the school was now closed for the summer. She spent her time making new clothes for herself and me and Raisse, even a shirt for me with a band of lace in each sleeve. Then one afternoon Mialle and Vurian burst into the workshop. They knew enough not to interrupt me — I was finishing Ashti’s knife. But when it was hanging on the rack Vurian said, “The queen is in Liorys! She’ll be here tomorrow.” The queen would have a horse, of course, so she could ride to town in one go, and nobody was chasing her so she wouldn’t have to hide on a little island in the Valda overnight. I looked for Ashti […]

We were talking so late after our Three Kings dinner that Mialle and Vurian stayed the night and slept on spare straw mattresses on the floor. We’d have to get out of the bedstead really carefully so as not to step on them! In the morning Ashti had to climb over me first to get up, then almost stepped on Vurian anyway because he’d been rolling in his sleep, and woke him up. Ashti went downstairs to get water and Vurian opened cupboards and drawers. Most were emorynmpty. He was looking for the chamber-pot! “Outside,” I said, “there’s an outhouse in the schoolyard.” “Oh! Of course!” We heard him stomp downstairs, and then Ashti came up and started the pancake batter. It was strange to leave the house together with Vurian and Mialle! When they turned one way and I the other, Vurian said, “perhaps I’ll see you later at the Order house.” I had at least another day’s work at the palace, though, perhaps two, even with Coran and Halla sharing the work. But first it was fighting practice at the Order house. I didn’t get Master Radan this time, but Master Aldin, a short man even older than […]

Ashti got work at a school somewhere between Master Sidhan’s house and the Order house, because the usual teacher was at home with a tiny baby. There was a teacher’s room over the school but the teacher didn’t live there (she had her own house with her husband, and now with the baby), so Ashti and I could have it! It even had a little kitchen with pots and pans and spoons and plates and stuff. Mialle went to live at Master Sidhan’s house, and Vurian too, they both got beds in the apprentices’ and journeymen’s attic. In the morning I went to the Order house to use the smithy. I’d thought it would be wonderful to have the whole smithy to myself but I was rattling around in it and I wished there was a master and journeymen and apprentices all working! But I liked the work, repairing stuff that Rava hadn’t got round to. And after work I picked up Ashti at the school and we went to Master Sidhan’s for dinner and lessons. Dinner was a mountain of some kind of grain (rice, I learned later) with different sorts of meat and vegetables in bright-coloured sauces, yellow […]

What I don’t know where to fit in: Mialle asking if we could speak to someone who was in the Guild of Archan first and changed to the Guild of Anshen (Seran said the king’s best friend was one but he was away to the war and we might be able to talk to his father, who was still in the Guild of Archan) and Ferin saying that he couldn’t believe that all of his family were bad people though they were in the Guild of Archan by tradition. When the bell rang we followed the people going into the main building. First a wash in a huge wash-room where twice as many people could have washed comfortably, then dinner: soup with chunks of different vegetables and a hunk of bread, just like I’d had from Mother Maile. Master Seran and the queen had come in just as some of the youngest members of the Order started serving. It was a strange sight, the queen eating soup like any ordinary person! She didn’t eat much, though, because every time she got the spoon near her mouth she remembered something she wanted to say. Then other people cleared the tables and […]

When I woke up I thought I was still dreaming because I was lying in a softer bed than I’d ever had and I had Ashti in my arms! But she woke up too and made me know it wasn’t a dream. Then of course were were sticky and hungry and wanted a wash and breakfast. There were little windows that we could see the river through, but I thought I’d seen a well too, so washing wouldn’t be a problem. We put on a shirt and went to look. Our room was on a long corridor with spiral staircases at both ends, so we picked the nearest one. Just as we were on the stairs a girl of about ten came up, carrying a bowl with a jug of water that looked much too heavy for her. We backed up and I took the bowl from her as soon as we were on the landing. That was our washing-water! “Mialle said you were awake,” the girl said, and that made me blush, she must have heard us! We washed ourselves –there was a piece of soap that smelt like flowers, and I asked Ashti if it was lavender but […]

There we were on the other side of the river. I’d sort of counted on Ashti knowing where to go but she’d never been here, not even in Relsinay, her mother had handled that! And we didn’t want to go through Relsinay anyway, we wanted to go around it. But she did know how to get to the road that the carts went to Gulynay on: along the river for a while and then turn left into the wood. It was too dark to see much, the moon was almost full but it was behind clouds most of the time, but we found a trail that could have been made by animals or people and turned on to it. We hadn’t been in the wood more than a moment when a dog, or a dog-fox, that was hard to see in the dark, ran up and started to sniff between Mialle’s legs. “Hey!” I said, and grabbed him by the ruff. There was a lot of ruff to grab. “Stop that!” He let go but still wanted to sniff all of us. We gave him a bit of the hard sausage we’d brought, and he ate it with a lot […]

Well, that escalated quickly. It was very cold after the Feast of Naigha, getting colder over the weeks, and there was snow as high as my knees where it hadn’t been trampled down into hard and slippery ice, so one Day of Mizran Master Merain came to the smithy and we had our lesson in Alyse’s kitchen. She didn’t like that one bit and complained about it, and Layse didn’t like it either but didn’t say anything. Not that we did anything else than push against each other with our minds, “training our strength,” the master said. I thought I might try to get around him, but he must have heard me thinking because he said “no tricks!” He was so much stronger than us that he floored us every time, me once literally (on my butt on the stone floor, hard), except once when Mialle stood up to him and made him scowl. “Useless worms, both of you,” he said. “If you weren’t a decent sort of smith I’ll send you to the workshop starting tomorrow. And as for you…” He didn’t tell Mialle what he’d do with her, but turned and snorted and left the house, saying “I’m […]