Ayneth writes home This letter is sent just before the Feast of Timoine and will arrive in Valdis sometime before the Feast of Anshen. Alysei Ayneth astin Velain to Alysei Athal astin Velain, king of Valdyas, and Ravei Raisse astin Brun, queen of Valdyas. Dear brother and sister, You will probably have had Namak’s official announcement already, but I still want to tell you that you have a nephew! His name is Ayneith Shishe Radan Ozman astin Velain, “Prince Radan” in daily life. (I like the way our names are so entangled in his name.) “Ozman” means “prince”, of course. He’s a pretty golden colour, like a shelled walnut, with lots of black hair –Grandmother saw a red sheen in the sunlight, though– and hungry all the time but that seems to be normal. I’m still in the Temple of Dayati where he was born. I hadn’t intended that at all, but the high priestess had invited me to look at the new building and I thought I should do that before I was so close to my time that I couldn’t manage it any more: two weeks to go, should have been safe! But before looking at any new […]

This will arrive soon after Athal returns to Valdis. Kept it in the “taking the fort” category because it’s a natural consequence of those events. Alysei Ayneth astin Velain, in Aumen Síth, to Alysei Athal astin Velain, king of Valdyas, in Valdis. Dear brother, I’m confident that letters travel faster than kings so perhaps this will even reach you before you’re back in Valdis, and if not, in time to save you from doing something foolish. Though in Valdis you have Raisse to save you from doing foolish things; I may be worrying too much. What you need to know is first of all this: Don’t worry about the succession for Aumen Síth, and especially don’t go bargaining with other kings about marriage for any children of yours before they’re grown, because I’m taking care of it myself. Raith assures me that it’s a boy, due sometime after the Feast of Timoine Dayati. (Though I think what they celebrate here at Midsummer is the Feast of Dayati; I must find out what they celebrate when we have the Feast of Timoine.) Before you ask: Shishe Namak, of course, and it was even quite pleasant, the natural continuation of an evening […]

Last installment, because we’ve left Raith and Ayneth in Solay to mind their own business while Athal goes home to his family and kingdom, in that order of importance. I’d thought the journey to the fort would take days, but it was more like weeks; making camp in the evening and setting out in the morning took the greatest part of the time. We passed several villages where some people stayed behind, but more joined us. When we were in sight of the fort my legion had grown to forty-five thousand at least. I let the people stop before the end of the day, because there was something I had to do which I couldn’t do where the Khas could see us. I selected a girl of about nine and a youth of about fifteen and asked them to send me everyone who was not younger than she was and not older than he was. There were so many young people that I spent the whole rest of the day letting them pass before me, and sending the ones who looked gifted to one side and the rest to the other side, promising to speak to all of them. When […]

A short one this time because much of what happened is, in Ayneth’s words, “all in a big pile that I’ll have to sort out when I’m not so busy.” In the morning I found Surtaunu crying, and he didn’t have words for what distressed him but took me to the room where the milk-mother and her family were living. “He’s my brother! And now he’s his brother!” It took some explaning, and a lot of cuddling, to make it clear to him that the fact that someone else was feeding his baby brother didn’t mean that he couldn’t be his big brother any more; moreover, that he could now have not only a baby brother, but also two other little brothers and a baby sister. The milk-mother helped by letting Surtaunu suck at her breast too– he couldn’t get much milk, babies suck a lot more strongly, but it did give him solace. “And if you need milk for the other two,” I said to the father, “there’s an out-of-work goat somewhere around here. Ask Surtaunu, he’s very good at milking.” Raith found me there and took me to the top of the gate immediately. The legion in the […]

I hope she knows what she’s doing… Raith and Athal seem to think it’s normal. Either that, or they both know from experience that they can’t stop her when she’s that way. When we woke up we were alone in the bed again –after various people had joined us in the night– and promptly took advantage of it. Then the maids appeared with clothes for us, a different sort of clothes than we’d worn before. It had become cloyingly warm and damp, but these clothes were clearly made for this weather: loose trousers from a material that didn’t stick, and a sash and breast-cloth to soak up sweat; also a head-cloth. “The women who work here change the cloths every few hours,” Grandmother said, “so they can be washed.” Surtaunu chimed in: “I can wash those, that’s easy! You only use water, and rinse them until they don’t smell like woman any more, and then you hang them up until they’re dry.” It appeared that we were going to have this weather for weeks on end, and that it would get worse and worse until after the Feast of Anshen or whatever they have here at Midsummer, and then the […]

She’s very happy: close to Raith and getting every opportunity to do the work she’s good at. And even if she were unhappy, my other half points out, she’d be too busy to notice and/or surrounded by too many people to give herself the chance to mope. I still don’t know if Bhandrekhadi is what Khopai called himself for Ayneth’s benefit, whether they’re the same man at all. If I write the book I’ll have to find out (or make something up). We arrived at a barrier, manned by Iss-Peranian soldiers. Behind it, the houses were significantly smaller: in some streets our heads while we were on horseback were level with the eaves. Even here there were no outside windows. Eventually we got to a large building, or a smallish block, where Ruyin dismounted. “Let me go and ask first,” he said. Five of the soldiers stayed with me at the door, the rest surrounded the block. “If I’m not back in about a quarter of an hour, you must all come in.” At his knock an old woman opened the door and he talked to her, in such atrocious dialect that I didn’t even understand what it was about. […]

It’s a good thing that Ayneth is a practical and proactive person, because things are really happening now. We woke up because the baby was crying. Hungry, of course. The two boys had somehow ended up between us, and the bed was completely wet– obvious, because we were all naked, even the baby who couldn’t use the chamber-pot yet. “The sheets need washing,” the elder boy said. I must ask his name one of these days! I know now that the baby is called Cabre, or however you spell it. We ended up going to the servants’ quarters together, the boy carrying the baby, Raith the wet sheets and I the milk bottle. There was milk in the servants’ quarters all right: the grandmother (“not my real grandmother, but that’s what we call her”, the boy said) having boiled it with leaves to make it healthier. I didn’t recognise the leaves, though I know a lot of cooking herbs and even some healing herbs, but obviously not Síthi herbs! They did smell nice, though, as if one could make tea with them. One teenaged boy was fascinated by my freckles: “you’re speckled all over! Are you ill?” I tried to […]

So here I am in Solay — have to learn to call it Aumen Síth, easy enough when I’m trying to speak Síthi but I can’t write Síthi yet — writing on the strange paper they have here, Raith says made of reeds. When I tried and failed to write with a brush Raith got me a kind of stone stylus, like charcoal only much harder, which works, sort of. Perhaps I can round up a goose and procure some quills. It turned out that I’m almost as bad a sailor as Athal. I thought that was an affliction of grand masters, and that I as barely-a-master would be spared it! But Athal says anybody can get seasick. He was right, by the way, that seasickness is something you don’t die of but you wish you would. I spent most of the voyage alternately lying in my bunk feeling rotten and hanging over the railing being sick. Athal was actually worried when he didn’t see me, he thought that Raith had left me behind after all. Fortunately, the next moment I was in his arms, neither of us caring that I was filthy after six weeks in the same clothes […]