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 building I went into the temple hall (already built and beautifully decorated, no two pillars the same just like it used to be in the old temple) to pray, and there Radan decided to come into the presence of the goddess. “You’re hardly the first woman whose waters break at Dayati’s feet,” the priestess said. They took me somewhere cool and sheltered, I later saw that it was the gallery around the kitchen garden, and I was surrounded by midwives. I sent for Grandmother because I’d promised, and the Valdyan midwives also came because they had promised. There were six or seven women attending me at one point, not counting my maids Khanu and Ishi who go with me everywhere and Raith who was at my side almost at once.

Well, it was easy. I’d thought that I was so much a Velain that I’d have a hard time of it, but Namak isn’t a big man and Radan did come two weeks early. When I had him suckling furiously at my breast, all wet and slippery, I thought “oh? was that all?” but later I was exhausted, and slept as much as I could in between Radan insisting that he was hungry. What he got that first day was more like honey than milk, but that also seems to be normal and I have real milk now, so much that I could feed another one. (This makes me think that I’ll ask the priestesses if they have any orphan infants, perhaps I can feed another one.)

Namak wasn’t let in until we had both been washed, and we were in a comfortable bed– still in the kitchen garden gallery, being the coolest place in the whole temple complex. It turned out he’d been cooling his heels for hours outside! But the midwives, especially Grandmother, didn’t hold with men at a birthing. Which is strange, because Moyri told me (she had it from her mother) that both the priests and the priestesses of Dayati used to help deliver babies before the Khas. Not that he could have done anything, I suppose, with all those other people there. I for one was too preoccupied to do anything except squeeze Raith’s hand and breathe or push when someone told me to.

This morning I thought I could stand for half an hour (an overestimate on my part, they had to bring me a stool with a cushion) so we dressed the sprog in princely clothes and went out into the temple yard and I named him to the gods. Then Namak took him out of the gates (the temple gates, not the city gates) and showed him to the people. There were thousands of people in the square in front of the temple, spilling over into the streets. This is of course the place where the old temple of Micalacuk used to be, so you know how large it is. The new temple of Micalacuk that’s being built at the old harbor isn’t nearly so large, but much more handy to work in, the clerks tell me.

I don’t know if this will do anything for my status here– I don’t intend to have myself reduced to being only the heir’s mother, one viceroy’s wife and the other viceroy’s mistress. I could have told you that Raith wouldn’t marry Namak, however circumspectly he asked her; but he’s negotiating with an Ishey princess, or law-woman, or whatever the Ishey have that’s noble enough, and we’ll have her coming to dinner as soon as I can sit up a whole evening, because I want to be in on it. I do intend to go back to what I’ve been doing, overseeing the rebuilding of the city and talking to everybody I can reach so they know they’re being appreciated. Grandmother is going to show me how to carry Radan in a sash and strap him to my front, and when he’s a bit bigger to my back, so I can take him along. It will probably mean a guard of soldiers as well as Ishi and Khanu, but if that makes Namak happy I won’t mind, people know me well enough now not to be alarmed anyway. (Or I can get someone to teach Ishi and Khanu to guard me, won’t that surprise people? I suspect Khanu, at least, already knows how to handle a knife.)

Athal, be assured that I’m happy and so are Raith and Namak, and as we said when you were here, happy rulers make for a happy country. I shall find a painter to make a likeness of the sprog to send you, so you can show that to the family and everybody. I don’t suppose you’ll be coming here soon, and even if you start the moment you get my letter he’ll probably be walking when you arrive. (And yes, we’re planning a spare; but not just yet.)

Love to both of you, your children (three? or four already?) and anyone else who might want my love,

Ayneth

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 of talking and drinking, becoming friends, all three of us. Yes, we did drink from your special jug, and so did he, for most of the evening anyway. I haven’t accepted his proposal of marriage: I thought it more fitting that he should take that up with you. I assume he sent his letter with the same ship, so if all goes well you should have it practically in your hands. He is actually serious about marrying three or four wives: me for the succession, Raith to keep me happy, one to look after his estate, and one that he’s in love with! I don’t think he’s met the third and fourth yet, because he told me he’ll let us approve them. I do hope he’ll give the other two some children, too. I have to get it into his head that I’m not jealous that way. (Or indeed at all, it seems, though I don’t know what I’d do if someone dared touch Raith.)

I understand that it won’t change much about the way we’re living if we marry Namak, because we’re living in the women’s quarters already and a governor’s wives are expected to have their own household. The only thing that Namak finds strange is, not that Raith and I are together, but that we don’t have a household each.

Oh, and you should say yes, of course. We’ve practically said yes already. And otherwise, the offspring would be only my heir, and by extension yours, and not an heir for the whole city.

Do you think you (or possibly Raisse) can find an adventurous midwife or two who want to move here and work with the midwives we already have? Not that I am worried, I trust Grandmother completely with any birthing of mine, but everybody seems to think that the Valdyan midwives are the hummingbird’s private parts and I don’t want to disabuse them of it because I know that we do have some very good ones. And if we pretend they’re there for me, people will probably want to listen to them, and learn from them, and most importantly teach them and share what they know.

Because after my madcap expedition, as Raith graciously calls it, it turns out that everybody listens to me. This would be a good thing if it didn’t mean that I have to be perfect all the time that I’m in sight, because people remember what I say even if I don’t. Is that what being a king is like, too? It never bothered me when you were off to Iss-Peran and I was your regent.

They do listen to Raith, too, but it’s very clear that as far as the people are concerned Raith is the great mysterious mage and I’m the person to talk to. It irks Raith sometimes because she’s uncomfortable on a pedestal, but I don’t mind much because if everybody wanted to talk to her as much as they apparently want to talk to me, either she wouldn’t last a week or I’d have an insane amount of work keeping everybody away from her. Keeping them away from myself is easier, because most people do as I say, and I’m getting rather good at sending people to who they really need.

Please hug Raisse for me, and cuddle your little red-haired scamps from their auntie, and if you see Faran tell him that I blow him a kiss so you can see him blush.

Raith sends her love, and so do I, your sister and half-a-viceroy

Ayneth

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 it was fully dark, and I was exhausted, and there were still hundreds or perhaps thousands waiting, I sent all of those to the gifted side and went to speak to them first.

I explained where Khas mages got their power from, “you –or at least most of you– are their most coveted material”, and tried to emphasise that I was going to leave them here, in the camp, not for their own safety but to avoid making the Khas mages any stronger than they already were. And I had work for them to do: get the camp ready to move, so that we wouldn’t be held up on the way back– phrasing this carefully to avoid the word ‘flee’, though perhaps it would come to that. Two boys and a girl looked very gifted, budding grand masters, and I called the girl to me and tried to reach her with my mind. She flinched: “Grandmother has forbidden me to see spirits!” I said that it was only my spirit she was seeing, firmly attached to my body, and I should like to be able to rely on her in case we did come back and wanted to go on home right away, to warn her in advance. She nodded cautiously, wanting to please– I’d have liked to have time to teach her, but that would have to wait until this was over.

The other group was harder to talk to, because I had to explain first why I was taking them and not the rest: were they all sissies? “Nobody is a sissy here,” I said, “or they wouldn’t have come.” I tried from the practical side and enlisted them as my personal guard and support troops: who had stuff to make a noise with? who could climb? who had fireworks? This made them eager at least, and I committed a few faces and names to memory deliberately, and then crashed in my tent and slept like a log.

The next day we advanced to just out of arrow range of the fort and set to besiege it. I’d wanted to get up while it was still dark and ask my young support troops to tell everybody to burst out in noise at dawn, but I must still have been tired because I overslept and woke only when people came to tell me that a large group was already at the wall, shouting at the defenders. It was mostly women, some with children, and they seemed to be scolding the soldiers but I couldn’t understand it, as it was all in Khas. I must start learning Khas when I’m back! Some of our people called them back, and they came, but not before a man had fallen to his death from the wall– or perhaps he’d already been dead when he fell, because it wasn’t higher than about forty feet.

I realised that some of the soldiers in the fort must be the women’s husbands and sons and brothers. Perhaps most of them! I tried to find a way to keep soldiers from dying if they jumped from the wall, and thought we’d use the wagon covers, but some of the men had a better idea: spread bales of straw to make a cushion. Eventually they wove reed mats from the rushes growing in the river, dripping wet, so the fire arrows that some of the defenders fired fizzled out. Nobody jumped, though.

There was a kind of stalemate now, a tense silence. I talked to some of the fireworks boys who were throwing firecrackers over the wall. “Very good, you’re driving them all crazy!” I said. “Do we have to drive my half-brother crazy, too?” a boy asked, and of course he was right. “Well…” I started, but he already had an idea. “Suppose we wait until tonight to set them off, and cook lots of delicious things to make smells, and they’ll think we’re feasting and want to come out!” People were already foraging in the countryside; amazingly they brought back ducks and wild pigs too, though most of them were Síthi. A woman went to the fort with two small boys in tow and threw pasties over the wall. Later, I saw baskets being let down and pulled back up filled with food. There were no mages in evidence, which worried me a bit.

Another day passed much like that. There was more noise inside the fort, more food being sent up. Eventually a basket was cut down halfway and immediately a man came flying over the wall– almost cut to shreds. “Looks like they’re having a mutiny,” someone said. Merain of the Order of the Sworn called me, “what in the world are you doing there?” “Driving the Khas to mutiny,” I said. “I think most of them are our people really.” He cautioned me that they could very well send horses out to attack and scatter us; good point. “Do we have anything against horses?” I asked one of my boys. “A rope at ankle height?” he suggested. “And we’ll keep some of the rockets so we can scare them.” I thought perhaps spears in the ground at an angle, but he was against that, because the riders at least would be able to see them.

There may or may not have been another day; time started to run together in my mind. I remember asking someone in charge of supplies how much longer we could besiege the fort. “Two or three weeks,” he said. “We have the river.” At one point a woman ran up to the fort, addressing a stream of invective in Khas to her man on the wall, mixed with Síthi that I could just understand: “This is what you want! Not the army, not the fort, but this!”– and she bared her ample breasts at him. People were making love in the camp, much more than they’d been doing earlier. It made me pine painfully for Raith.

Still no mages, which worried me more and more. But as I was about to go to sleep in my tent I saw a sky full of bright stars and realised that we’d been able to see bright stars last night and the night before that as well. It was still warm and close, but the clouds were gone. “They’ve fixed the weather back in the city!” I said to nobody in particular.

That night, the gates of the fort opened very slowly and riders came out. The anti-horse rope worked: the first few out of the fort stumbled over it and broke their legs, the next rank stumbled over them. When there were enough of us there with torches so that we could actually see something, a good forty horses and their riders were lying dead in front of the gates. I couldn’t see by the clothes if the riders were officers, but if they were riding they were likely to be. No other soldiers came out of the fort. They couldn’t have even if they’d wanted to, because about forty thousand people were trying to get in all at once. I let myself be taken with the stream.

Clearly the fort had started out as a Síthi fort: there were high walls but it had only one floor. It was hard to see more than that, because there were people everywhere. Women, and some men, were hugging and kissing soldiers. I saw the carpenter it had all started with embrace a young man who looked rather like him, while a young woman clung to the young man’s other side.

A girl came up to me: “Your Majesty” –I’ll get used to that yet, but it still sounds strange applied to me; obviously, because my brother is a king, they think I’m a queen– “there’s something you should see. No, don’t go there, they’re fighting there and we’re fighting too.” I let her take me, down cellar stairs, through a short passage and round a bend, until we came to a large door that looked as if it was made entirely of gold. Now gold isn’t all that hard and the door echoed and didn’t dent when we banged on it, so perhaps it was gold-lined iron or copper. There was a strong seal on it that smelt of Khas magic. However I tried I couldn’t get it open –confound it, I’m not Athal– so I ordered it barricaded with any large heavy objects people could find. “What about the back door?” the girl asked. I must have looked very stupid, because she went on, “Haven’t you ever played hide-and-seek? Never hide in a place with only one exit.” Of course I’d played hide-and-seek, in a palace at that! I sat down on the ground and tried to find any disturbance in the earth. It didn’t look as if there were actual openings, but the earth wasn’t packed equally closely in all places. I couldn’t make much of it, so I called Merain on the other side and asked him “do these forts have secret passages?” Sure– there aren’t any forts without secret passages. The secret passage from the other fort led to somewhere behind the mountains to look out over the Khas lands. Well, if it did, and the mages had gone out that way, good riddance: they’d be for the army to worry about. But still, it would be a good idea to have a look.

Merain couldn’t keep up the contact for long –he hasn’t got the practice I have, I suppose– so he proposed coming over. An hour or so later he arrived with two journeymen. Somehow I’d pictured Merain swimming the river, but they weren’t wet so they must have had a boat. “Oh, a Khas seal,” he said. “They’re not worth much. So easy once you know how.” And before I could ask him whether he’d let me in on it, he’d taken the seal off. “You must teach me that,” I said. “I’ll be here for the next twenty years, time enough.” “I won’t be staying that long,” he said. “Ale! Women with red hair and freckles and broad firm thighs! Something else to eat than rice!” I could understand that: though I like rice, and have red hair and freckles of my own (though my thighs aren’t all that broad, I’m a Velain after all), I think I’m going to miss ale too.

With the seal off the door it was easy to look on the other side. Nothing alive behind it, but a lot of power. As I opened the door, air rushed in like a tempest. And stench came out– the reek of the dead, of people who had died in agony. Nobody who was within yards of the door could keep from vomiting.

At the back of the room there was a pile of bodies, richly dressed, mixed with rocks, one with a rock flattening both of his hands, one with a rock on his head. It looked as if they’d been about to go through an opening and a rockfall had killed them. “These must be the mages,” I said. “Looks like a bit of the castle fell on them.” I wondered privately what or who had caused the convenient rockfall– it had a strong smell of Athal about it.

There was a little more fighting, and a lot more feasting and joyful reunions. It went on until dawn and might have gone on forever if I hadn’t gone back to the camp to pack –or rather, to have people pack for me– and ride at the head of the legion again. I don’t think any of the soldiers of the fort who were still alive after all the fighting stayed behind; I had fifteen thousand more people to take home.

Athal and Raith were at the gate. I fell into Raith’s arms first, forgetting everything around me for a moment. “I didn’t expect to be away so long,” I said, “it’s been, what, six weeks?” “Seven,” Raith said, and wrapped herself around me again until I wanted to hug Athal. “You did it, didn’t you?” I asked him, and he knew immediately what ‘it’ was. “Yes, I must admit that,” he said. “One of the sergeants had seen the secret passage in the other fort, and I happened to take a look exactly when those mages were trying to get away through it, so I dropped a few stones on them.” And of course the clouds had disappeared at the same moment. “They sealed the front door, and I sealed the back door,” Athal said, “so they didn’t have any air to breathe. One thing the Khas mages can’t do is make air.” “We can’t do that either,” I said. I felt strangely unresolved, as if I hadn’t done anything at all, but when I said so to Athal he told me “If you hadn’t gone, nothing would have happened.” True, of course. This is the one thing I can do really well: make people do what they want to do, but don’t actually do for some reason.

So we had food, and a bath, and Raith got Grandmother to give me honest-to-Anshen faranie tea from Dushtan’s stock, and all of our household –more than when I’d left, I think over a dozen more– wanted to talk to me and touch me. Surtaunu gave me his little brother to hold and nestled against me, telling me about all of the new family. Ishi grumbled about my hair as if I’d never been away.

When we got back to Athal he was on top of the great gate overlooking the crowd in the square, making a speech. He stood on the shoulders of two big soldiers while two more big soldiers held him by the legs. He’d obviously rehearsed it, and I don’t think he’d written it: it was perfect rhetoric making it very clear that Aumen Síth was to be the greatest city in the world once again, where people of all nations would live together as equals. His tone changed: “I see all of you,” he said. “Yes, I see you,” jumping off the soldiers’ shoulders and picking up a little boy from the crowd. “But I’m invisible!” the child protested as Athal climbed to his high position again, still carrying him. “I see you,” I said, “don’t you, Raith?” “Nobody will be invisible in this city,” Athal said, and then put the boy down and let him run back to his parents. It went on for a long time more, while people at the edge of the square were already cooking food and opening barrels. When he finished, it turned into a feast seamlessly.

“I’ve made that square into a market square,” he said as he came back to us. “I hope that doesn’t interfere with your plans.” We hadn’t made any explicit plans yet, but a market would have been high on my list of things to get started. “And– remember our old teachers? First they make you sweat, then they praise you. I’ve done it the other way round, I’ve praised them and tomorrow it’s up to you two to make them sweat. I’m leaving on the evening tide.” “I’m surprised that you stayed at all,” I said. “I expected you to be gone when I came back.” “He had to make his speech,” Raith said. That made sense, of course; and if it was the last thing the people saw and heard of him that was what they’d remember him by. “Expect me back in a few years,” Athal said. “I want every child in my kingdom to have the chance to see their king before they’re apprenticed.” And with the parts of his kingdom spread all over the world now, that meant a voyage every four years or so, unless he wanted to travel the whole kingdom in one go.

Then the servants came to tell Athal that the ship was ready. Uncle Ferin was there, too– “do you need me, cousin?” but I didn’t, I had all the soldiers I needed, Talvi deserved to get him back. And I was pleased to see that Faran was going too. “I think I can do about half your work,” I said, “and other people can do the other half.” The look he gave me then made even Raith blush, and I think I grinned very sheepishly. The three men got into a little boat already filled with people and were off to the ship. Several women swam after it to give Faran a final kiss.

So we went to bed. We had the bed for ourselves for a while, then the household started to trickle back. “Oh! I said. “I was going to ask Merain to teach me to handle Khas seals, has he gone with Athal?” But then I saw him in a corner, cuddling one of our Síthi girls. Raith said, with a grin, “And Athal has gone north to Valdyas, not to Kushesh to heal the land.” “Who will heal the land then?” I asked. “Oh, perhaps the gods, perhaps someone else. That’s not Athal’s business.”

When we appeared the next morning, the hall was teeming with people who wanted to see us. We decided to see the angry ones first and then the ones we could talk to. We sat on the imperial throne, more than large enough for the two of us. Had he or the ancestor who built it been a huge man, or had he worn voluminous clothes, or was it just that he had wanted to show how great he was? The moment I sat down there, I noticed that I was really very much like Athal, even in my way of sitting.

A man started with a long tirade about “people who eat the flesh of thinking creatures” (which made me think of the ducks and pigs at the fort, and Raith of Reshan who could speak to animals’ minds but still hunted), not living as “we have lived for centuries”– well, in a time like this, change was probably in order! He stretched my Síthi more and more, until I said “I want Khanu” and she appeared at my elbow to translate. (I’m getting very spoilt, having all those people around who actually enjoy taking care of me!) Raith got really angry at the man when he talked about “giving those invisibles the same rights as us people” and floored him with her mind. Literally: he was lying at her feet. She got off the throne and beckoned to Khanu: “would you undress, please?” She took off her clothes too, to make the man see that both of them were women, equally visible. I don’t know whether he really got it, but he curbed his tongue after that. Khanu wasn’t completely convinced either: she insisted that of course we could see her, the gods see everybody! This made Raith go spare all over again: “we’re all just people, even Mizran!”

After some more hours of trying to make it clear that men and women were just that, men and women, whichever nation or class they came from, and that the king himself had said that everybody was visible and ought to be treated as such, we were glad of having kept the easy petitioners for last. Food was brought, and it turned from an audience into a leisurely meal. How long before we have our audiences in the pool?

Now that Athal has instituted a market, I can get on with the next thing on my list. Rebuild the temples, starting with Dayati and the Mother and ending with Mizran, what’s his name here, Micalacuk. The gods don’t go away when there are no temples, but people need a place to talk to them. Raith wondered whether I wanted Valdyan builders for that, but I’m sure that among all the people in the city there must be some builders. When there’s a temple of Dayati I’ll find gifted children, starting with one as I started the march to the fort with that carpenter, and give them a chance to learn. Perhaps I can find that girl again, whose grandmother has forbidden her to see spirits. What I can’t teach they can learn from others, and perhaps I’ll learn a thing or two myself. And I have to keep Raith from overstretching herself; I can see all the signs. At least she had the sense to ask me to come and take care of the city with her. I don’t know how she would have ended up if she’d been alone.

We can’t make the whole world better, but we can make our little piece of world a little better. After those exhausting audiences Raith asked me “shall we adopt Khanu as our own daughter?” and I thought that was a very good idea, I’ll see if I can find someone to do the paperwork. It’s only now that it occurs to me that I won’t have to worry so much about heirs any more.

Oh, and I must learn Khas, and hope it doesn’t get in the way of my Síthi.

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 square seemed to have multiplied. “Twenty-five thousand at least,” she said. “If I were a betting woman I’d bet on you going to the fort with thirty-two thousand tomorrow.” For the first time –not exactly, I realised, but for the first time consciously– I was aware how large this was, but heady like wine, exciting and only a little frightening. “It’s like you wrote to me, right?” I asked Raith. “The big weather patterns.” “Well, not completely,” she said. “I think this is the beginning of an order in which the Síthi don’t have to be ashamed any more.” They were all ashamed now, she said, after twenty years of oppression. And, I thought silently, perhaps centuries of living in a society with such ridiculous skew between people. “It started with only one man,” I said, “a carpenter, he wouldn’t have any of it but I talked him round.” “That may have been the real beginning, then,” Raith said. She asked whether I’d eaten yet, and I had to admit that I was hungry. One of the watchmen, hearing that, shared his bread and fried fish with me.

Then there was a day of nothing but logistics. Raith was off to the Iss-Peranian quarter to talk to dandar, but she wouldn’t have been any use to me for this anyway. “You’re going to need Faran,” Athal said, and Faran was indeed the man I was already on my way to see. I learned more about the day-to-day planning of all kinds of things in one day than in all of my twenty-two years before this, but it’s all in a big pile that I’ll have to sort out when I’m not so busy. The gods know when that will be!

I think Raith would have lost her bet: the next morning there were close to forty thousand people, the new captain of my guard estimated. There were horses, and a train of supply wagons –as well as everybody who had some food to carry carrying it– and even two very large elephants, which seemed at the moment to serve mainly for children to gawk at. They’d be useful to clear a path too, I thought, but there was a horse for me and I’d have to ride right at the front with the captain and a few of the guards.

I spent a few moments alone with Raith in the gatehouse. “I believe you can do it,” she said. She would be working closely with the dandar to hold off the clouds with what Athal considered a seal, but the dandar called boundary-stones. I wouldn’t be so far away that she couldn’t keep track of my progress; comforting idea. We kissed, and I left glowing with her blessing.

Left… well, it took hours for even me to get out of the city, and most of the rest of the day to get the whole legion out, and when we camped I could still see Solay and guessed I could have walked back on my own in three hours or so. I walked through a bit of the camp, greeting people I recognised, to get a feel of the mood: cheerful, expectant, almost like a holiday but with a serious undertone.

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 rainy season would come and it wouldn’t stop raining until it stopped completely. Not like at home, where you have rain at the end of practically every oppressively hot day and the next day it’s dry again. Well, I’ll get used to it, I suppose.

When we got to Athal’s tower room for breakfast, Raith started to look out of the window immediately. The weather did look strange: a ring of dark grey clouds around the city and nowhere else. “That looks like someone made it,” she said, and Athal and I couldn’t but agree. It did smell of magic. “Can the Khas mages do weather like you?” I asked Raith, but she wasn’t sure whether it was really like her or something else entirely. “I suppose the enemy can learn from us, too,” Athal said. Raith rather thought the Khas mages, or whoever, were trying to provoke her. We discussed the matter some more– if this was the Khas, they clearly expected us to do something, so we should do something they didn’t expect. Athal and Raith they both expected, and I’d had Athal send me instead of going himself once already and it had worked, so why shouldn’t I go and do something? A plan was forming in my mind, but I couldn’t grasp the details. (Well, that’s what I’m like: at that stage of a thorny problem I have to either start doing whatever needs to be done and it will fall into place by itself, like the hospital at Veray, or worry at it like a badger until there’s something distinctive to grasp it by. This was obviously the worry-like-a-badger kind of thing.)

When we came downstairs we found Beguyan there with his personal dandar, some of the staff officers and the commander of the Order of the Sworn. They were as worried as we were. “I want to speak to Grandmother,” Athal said, and I went to fetch her from our apartments where she was washing dishes, sensibly in the nude. She put on clothes much like mine, except that she had a loose-fitting straight shift instead of the sash and breast-cloth. When we passed the open space between the women’s quarters and the tower, she stood still to look at the sky: “you’re right! This doesn’t look as it should!”

Athal let Grandmother sit on his own chair and asked her about the weather. Yes, there should be clouds; no, they always covered the whole sky, first white, then grey, then the rain started falling. And it was coming a month early, too: it shouldn’t be this hot, or cloudy at all, until after the feast. The commander of the Order of the Sworn, who had apparently lived in Solay for some time, could confirm that. “What happens when it rains now?” I asked. ‘There will be no harvest,” Athal said, looking more worried than ever. Beguyan’s dandar –a woman about Raith’s age, probably not very nice, but quite efficient– told us that she and her companions were holding the clouds back, and that the power was growing stronger but they could hold out for a week or two. “We can do better than that if the Valdyan dandar work with us,” she said. I asked whether she considered me a Valdyan dandar, and she said yes.

Then Grandmother said, out of the blue: “The tiger eats the goat, but the ants eat the tiger.” That was what I needed. “Give me two soldiers who can speak Ilaini and Síthi, and Khanu,” I said, “I’ll go into town and get a whole crowd of people to come to the Khas fort with me and annoy them so much that they won’t be able to send bad weather any more. A thousand, two thousand, whoever will come.” The dandar looked doubtful, but I said “That’s what I can do. I can get people going.” I got my two soldiers, and Khanu came and asked if she could bring Ishi, which made five of us. We went out while Raith went to Athal’s tower room to take a closer look at the clouds.

There were people everywhere. I looked for a market stall, because that’s where strangers are most likely to talk to each other, but I saw none; the nearest person who looked as if he would talk was a carpenter mending the door of a house. “Bad weather, isn’t it?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “the nails rust as you hammer them in. It’s the Valdyan witch who does it, I’ve heard.” I disabused him of that at once and told him that the Khas were doing it –I wasn’t completely sure myself yet but it was a safe assumption– and the Valdyan witch was fighting them. And he would be able to help with that, and so would anyone else he could round up able to hold a hammer or to pelt the Khas with rusty nails (1). “Don’t you have any apprentices?” I asked. “What’s that?” “Well, you can do carpentry, and someone who wants to learn that could learn it from you.” “That’s impossible!” he said. “Then other people can do it, too!” Lots of work when I come back… But at least I had one man convinced, and he was going to talk to others: it was rolling. “Come to the big square outside the palace the day after tomorrow and we’ll start from there,” I said. “Are you going to feed us, then?” he asked, and I had to admit to myself that I hadn’t thought about that, but said “I’ll do my best.”

I spent the rest of the day doing the same thing, talking to this and that person. Some spewed abuse at me, or at Raith through me once they knew who I was, but most people were glad to hear that there was something they could do to get rid of the Khas and of the bad weather, even though they couldn’t do any fighting. Whole gangs of street children grabbed at the opportunity to cause trouble for people they didn’t like. Families started planning how they’d let the toddlers scream uncontrolled for once. One young man promised to make as many fireworks as he could, and bring all his friends with their fireworks as well.

As soon as I made my exhausted way through the door to our apartment, Surtaunu came to fetch me. “Lady Raith is on the bed with a very bad headache,” he said. There she was, indeed, being sponged off with cold water by several maids and Grandmother. I took someone’s cloth and rinsed her forehead, not only with water but also with my mind. “They haven’t got any faranie here,” Raith grumbled. I asked Grandmother to make tea from the leaves that had been on the ice. “Impossible! She’s a princess!” I managed to explain that Valdyan princesses did drink tea, and moreover this was medicine. Raith drank the tea with a scowl –bitter!– and then asked for a bucket and vomited, but after that she did feel better. “I think this shouldn’t be made into tea,” she said, “but rather a tincture with brandy. They invented brandy here, they should have some.” I resolved to ask someone, but first I wanted Raith to tell me about her exploits with the clouds. The dandar had pushed at the Khas working quite glaringly, so Raith could slip through unnoticed. It was indeed a mage at the fort, one that neither she nor Beguyan’s dandar knew, probably freshly from the west.

I wanted to talk to Athal, but that meant also to all the officers and the dandar, and Raith wasn’t up to that yet so we went swimming first to cool down and collect ourselves. Almost everybody came with us. The goat and her young were in the water too, but nobody was concerned about that: Surtaunu even proved he could dive by picking up goat droppings from the bottom. “Very clean, I get them all!” After a while we got dressed and faced the commanders. There were even more of them now, Valdyan officers and Iss-Peranian officers in Valdyan uniforms, and more dandar, and some officers who were clearly in the Guild of the Nameless. Raith told them –some of them again, apparently– about the clouds and the Khas mages (“once again lots of children will die– do you think the Khas get their power from themselves?” and I added “or from the world itself, like us?”), and I told them about my plan to go and annoy the Khas so they’d be distracted and could perhaps be disposed of, or at least would not pay so much attention to their weatherworking. “Do we have to feed them?” an officer asked. I said I’d promised to do my best. “Well, if they could eat gold with gold sauce it would be easy, but as they can’t we’ll have to work just a little harder.”

Athal took me up on the gates, where about five thousand people were already camped, with cooking fires and all. “You’ll learn to count the Síthi way,” he said. “I had to learn that, too. I expect you’ll have fifteen thousand to take west with you.” “There’s one thing I’m afraid of,” I said. “That the Khas will come out and crush my people because none of them are fighters. There is safety in numbers, but still.” “Yes,” Athal said, “that’s why I’m sending part of the Order and one of my regiments of conquered Khas along the other side of the river. They’ll seal the fort so the Khas won’t be able to come out and will be all yours.” I went out of the gate with Raith to talk to people. There were only a few I remembered talking to: most had come because someone they knew was coming. After a while it became too much for us, especially for Raith with her headache, and we went back in, only to find Athal in the pool with our whole household, goats and all.

Later, the three of us went to have a final glass of wine –real wine this time, I think we’ve almost trained the table-servers to pour for us from the same jug as the king– and to talk some more. I wondered whether to leave a day earlier as there were so many people ready to go already, but Athal thought the day after tomorrow would be best because of all the logistics involved. Logistics reminded me of Faran, and I implored Athal once again to take him to Valdyas with him when he leaves in a few weeks. No longer, even if I’m not back by then, he needs to go back to Raisse and see the little princess. “But Faran likes his work! Ah, well, perhaps I ought to listen to you, little sister.”

I don’t remember how the talk came round to the gods then, but I do remember asking Athal “the gods are different here, aren’t they?” and it threw him into a discourse about how the gods are different from each other: Timoine was opinionated, Anshen and Archan actually had character, and Mizran was two-faced, at least in this war, on the one hand the hunter who didn’t mind all the killing, on the other hand the more contemporary one, craftsman and trader, who would take offense at the waste. Then Raith took over, talking about Naigha– the way she was compassionate to individual people and dispassionate on the battlefield, and fierce and angry when someone kept people from her who she was due to collect.

The right course of action for Raith seemed to be to do nothing at all, which irked her. “They will think you’re preparing a big strike against them,” I said, “and it will be such a surprise when you actually do!” The strangest thing for her, perhaps, was that I was going away and she’d stay behind, quite the opposite of what we’ve been used to. But this time she didn’t warn me of the danger, even though she’d had misgivings when I first went into town. Either she trusts me completely (though, frankly, I don’t know if it will work, it’s just a hunch, but my hunches have usually been right until now) or she’s too worried to worry about me.

When we got back to the women’s quarters at last, we found Grandmother sprawled on the bed and doctor Dushtan in the kitchen with the baby boy, Cabre. “We really need to find a woman,” she said, and I ran out immediately to my five thousand people and asked the first woman I saw nursing a baby, “Do you want to save someone’s life?” She came, baby and all, and nursed Cabre, and when she was worried about not having enough milk I told her that the more babies suck, the more milk you have, as I’d seen in Veray and everywhere. She asked if her husband could come, and of course he could; they’re now living in one of the unused rooms in our quarters with their baby and two older children. We’re getting to be a real Síthi family, as Grandmother can confirm. (It turned out that she’s only forty-eight, ten years younger than Raith! But she is a real grandmother, venerable as they come, and of course twenty years of war will age a woman far beyond her years.)

---

Afterthought: red-hot rusty nails. Thanks, Z!

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. Then he went in with her, leaving us outside.

I got off my horse and planted my feet firmly on the earth and looked around with my mind. Still no sign of the Order of the Sworn, though I could see many gifted minds both in the block and outside it. I think I could have seen and perhaps spoken to Athal or Raith if I’d put my mind to it, but I didn’t want to risk it in this unknown neighbourhood, probably before I had to do something difficult.

Just as I was getting anxious the door opened and Ruyin beckoned me. “Bhandrekhadi will deign to see you,” he said. (I need to invent a letter for ‘kh’ because both the Iss-Peranians and the Síthi use the sound all the time, I’m using c-with-a-stroke for now.) We rode in through something between a passage and a gate and arrived in a courtyard, where we could leave the horses and our escort was served wine and something to eat. Then the old woman took Ruyin and me through more passages –a part of the house that looked for all the world like women’s quarters, but empty of women and indeed mostly of people– into a great hall. The door we came in through was so small that it was probably a servants’ door. There was a large chair like a throne at the far end with a man in his thirties sitting on it. What could be seen of his body outside the purple robes he was wearing was marked with ink, like the snakes on the arms of a priestess of Naigha, but all different designs in colours. At first sight he looked fat, but when we came closer I could see that it was all muscle. I was intending to kneel to him on one knee as to a lord, but he forestalled me by coming towards me and throwing himself at my feet. He called me “lady, princess, ear of the great King Athal” and I could only say “Master” in return. “I should prefer to speak Iss-Peranian or Síthi now,” he said, and I answered that I could speak Síthi but not very well, and wouldn’t hesitate to ask for clarification.

Bhandrekhadi –for it could only be him– made me sit on his throne and sat at my feet, leaving Ruyin to stand. A servant brought wine, and I smelt it cautiously, but Bhandrekhadi and Ruyin both drank of it so I thought I might as well do it too. It was sweeter and more heavily spiced than what I was used to, but pleasant enough.

Not only did Bhandrekhadi know who I was, but also what I had come for. “I am not the person you should be speaking to,” he said, “but that person will not speak to you, so I shall. [name I couldn’t understand at all] has permitted me to serve her.” And he went on to tell me the history of the city, starting with the time before the Khas came, when there were five classes of people: the priests and nobles, the merchants, the servants or slaves, the untouchable, and the invisible. With great circumlocution he made it clear that he himself had belonged to the invisible. The Temple of Dayati and of the Mother would take in just about everybody who was in need, but if one of Bhandrekhadi’s sort knocked on the door of one of the other temples, someone would open the door and close it again because they simply didn’t see them. “In those days, if I’d lain on the ground with my mouth wide open in front of one of those priests, they wouldn’t even have shat in it!”

When the Khas first came, the old order was overthrown and there were opportunities for everyone, especially the people who hadn’t had any opportunity at all before. Some had used that opportunity to serve the Khas, some had fended for themselves. I was now speaking to the people who had never paid taxes to the Khas (and not to the emperor either, Ruyin whispered to me; and I didn’t dare ask whether they were paying taxes to the king or intending to), and the conflict at hand was with the people who had paid, and who had taken their, that was Bhandrekhadi and his family’s, houses from them to boot. “We fight. And we helped many people who could not fight to leave the city, to flee to your country.” (Later, Athal said that he expected the other side to tell me the same story; he may well be right.)

At some point a young girl came in with an enormous silver tray full of dainty finger food. She was very pretty in the doe-like Síthi way, rather like Cora’s friend Keti. When she had left I said as much to Bhandrekhadi, who looked a little startled at first but then thanked me for the compliment. More circumlocution –“you are the ear of the King, I am the eyes of [name I couldn’t understand]”– which I will probably remember the gist of when it’s relevant, and then he sent us cursorily away, claiming that it was getting dark.

When we got to the horses the girl was standing there, carrying a small bundle, obviously in order to come with us. Bhandrekhadi came up, smiling, and said that as his daughter had clearly pleased me, he was giving her to me as a gift. “Master,” I said, “we have no slaves; if she really wants to come with me, I’ll free her as my brother has freed all of his slaves.” “What you do with your gift is your business,” he said, and that was the end of it.

I took the girl –her name turned out to be Khanu, another use for my new letter– in front of me on my horse. It was indeed nearly dusk; when we got to the palace it was almost completely dark. Ruyin had disappeared along the way, which I hadn’t noticed because I’d been thinking about what Bhandrekhadi had told me. As I was about to introduce Khanu to Ishi and the other girls, she grabbed my arm and said “Khopai. Remember that name.” (So I’m writing it down here in order to remember it, because I have nothing to associate it with.) I said to the girls: “This is Khanu, please take care of her. Khanu, this is Ishi, she’ll show you around.” Khanu looked at Ishi as if at a turd, screwing up her nose, and said to me “She’s half Khas!” “Yes, that’s true,” I said, “she serves me, and you may do that too.”

In our reception room Athal, Ferin and Mehili were sitting with Raith, bent over a map that covered the whole table. All of them looked worried. “Did you get the dispatches you were waiting for?” I asked Athal. He nodded and pointed out, on the map, what he was worried about. “There were two forts there guarding the mountain pass,” he said. “Beguyan’s troops destroyed one, and the other is full of Khas.” About thirty thousand, it seemed: a large enough force to cause concern. “I may have to go there myself,” Athal said. “And perhaps take Raith with me, the Khas know enough by now to run away when they get the merest whiff of Raith.” I wasn’t looking forward to being without both Athal and Raith for any length of time, especially if they were going into danger, but I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t even ask Athal not to give me the regency this time. I can really only handle little things, like placid and peaceful Valdyas, not big things like a city ten times the size of Essle full of brawling people I can’t even understand the language of most of the time.

“Come with me for a moment,” Raith said, and took me to the kitchen where I could hear pitiful cries. Two young men were holding Khanu, each by an arm, and the grandmother was spanking her like anything. “What’s this about?” I asked. Ishi answered. “She called us– no, I’m not going to say it, it’s too terrible.” “Invisible?” I asked. “Worse than that.” All the while the grandmother kept spanking, and Khanu kept crying, until Raith stopped it. “How can you make me live with these people?” Khanu wailed. “Do you eat their food?” “Yes,” I said. “They cook very well.” Khanu wouldn’t have any of it: “They’re–” and she said a word I didn’t understand and Raith blanched at. “All my servants are free and equal,” I said. “If you want to serve me like these other people, you may; if you don’t, you’re free to go.” Ishi and the young men scowled at that, and the grandmother looked at me with an expression of disbelief on her face. “If you elect to stay you can learn from Ishi, she knows how I like to be served.” I felt every inch a princess then: not a comfortable feeling. Raith noticed, of course, and took me by the arm and led me gently to the swimming-bath, while the servants were still bickering.

She had something of her own to work off: she swam about a dozen lengths faster than I could keep up with. Then she came and put her arms around me, still in the water, and we stood there for quite some time until we climbed out –nobody to hand us a towel– and started back. “Can we find a quiet place first?” I asked, and we lay under the colonnade, I on the hard flagstones, Raith touching me in every place I needed to be touched.

“Oh!” I said as we were heading back at last, “I have something to ask you. My captain wants to get married, and he’ll be here early tomorrow morning. He asked me whether you were a priestess of the Mother, and I was already saying no when I realised the answer was yes, with all those marriages in the army.” “I don’t know,” she said, “Naigha respects me, I’m pledged to Anshen, but the Mother? Ah well, I suppose you’re right. Let them come.” “They need a doctor too,” I said, and she suggested asking Athal for Dushtan, exactly what I’d thought already.

In the meantime Athal, Mehili and Ferin –Beguyan was making a round of his camps and would be away overnight– had thought of a way to overcome the fort without dropping it into the river and changing its course. It was on stone, not mud, and blocking the river at that point would leave the city completely without water. They were making a plan to build a sort of roof over the river, strong enough to withstand a large fort falling on it, so Athal could overturn it without much danger. It was clear, though, that this was the end of a long discussion. Presently Athal and Ferin went up to bed, leaving us three women at the table.

As soon as Athal was gone Mehili said to me, “I noticed that you were upset last night, when we talked about the succession, about Athal’s son’s marriage. But you should understand that it’s what the country needs. Athal agrees with me that Aidan and Asa would have been the perfect couple for the throne of Solay, but he disagrees with me on whether we can do that to them.” “They’d be so unhappy!” I said. “What is two people’s unhappiness compared to the happiness of a whole city, of a whole realm?” Mehili asked. I didn’t agree with that, “If the king and queen are unhappy the whole country is unhappy.” “But Asa has been brought up to make her husband happy.” I thought of Cora, how much she’d suffered by that upbringing, and shuddered to think of a little girl in the same straits right now, brought up to serve Radan who she hadn’t even heard of yet. “You know, Mehili,” I said, so softly that Raith couldn’t understand the words though I didn’t keep the meaning secret from her, “that my heart belongs to a woman doesn’t mean I can’t or won’t have children. I’d rather start the dynasty myself than lay it on my nephew.”

Mehili was silent for a while and then said, “I ought to go to bed too, but I can’t, not without my man.” “Stay with us tonight?” I asked. “The bed is full of people already, but we can make room for you. I know that you and Raith shared a bed with the queen of Il Ayande.” Mehili thought that was a good idea; she went and got her water-pipe, which Raith and I both declined. I rather like brus in very small doses, but Raith’s account of the strength of Mehili’s pipe was a good enough warning. She shrugged and smoked, becoming very dreamy and poetic. “Do you think,” she asked, “that ‘Mehili’ and ‘Maile’ are the same name?” “Might be,” I said. “Then you could call me Maile. I’d like that.” We did, and she giggled, and after a while started to drift into sleep. Raith took her by the arms, and I by the feet, and we got her into our bed where the boy with the baby was already sleeping.

Ishi and Khanu were each on one side of the bed, watching each other warily. “You know,” Khanu said, “you’re not half bad-looking after all.” “So would you be if you let your nose drop to its proper place instead of carrying it way too high,” Ishi said. Some more words like that, and then suddenly they were rolling over the bed wrestling, waking Mehili. “Kittens,” I said in Ilaini, and Mehili nodded wisely. “They can eat from the same bowl now.”

We all slept then, until the baby started crying with hunger in the middle of the night. Ishi and Khanu were at the foot of the bed, sleeping tightly curled in one another’s arms– or at least they had been before we were all cried awake. Raith went with the boy to get milk, and we fed him, and then Raith and I went to rinse milk and baby pee off ourselves in the pool again. When we came back the only place left in the bed was at the foot, so that was where we lay down. It’s not only all our servants who are equal!

I woke up early in the morning because there was commotion outside our quarters. Raith was already gone, and I hastily dressed –well, let Ishi and Khanu dress me– and went to look. Not only Ruyin was there with his intended, but what looked like the whole court and about half the army as well. “Do you all want to get married?” I asked. Not all of them, it turned out, but many of them, yes. Raith came back, pushing through the crowd, and told me that there was a spring in the palace park where she’d be going. She eyed the crowd and sighed. “I was expecting something like this. Get me Grandmother,” she told the nearest servant, and when the the old woman appeared, “I’ll do this on one condition: that Ayneth and I are left alone all evening, nobody else in our bed.”

The boy –I remembered to ask his name at last: it’s Surtaunu– was at my elbow, talking about the doctor, “she’s going to look at my little brother too! He’s not well!” I didn’t have much attention for him, because Raith wanted me with her. After Raith had said words over Ruyin and Chatna and poured water over their hands, a steady stream of people came to ask her the same service. Soldiers had built a linen shelter over the spring, and there was a jug of watered wine and some cups; after a while Ishi brought a large bowl of crushed ice and fruit syrup with a few grey-green leaves on top, “Grandmother says this is for when Lady Raith gets tired.” The leaves smelt like faranie, but stronger, more bracing. Raith ate some of the ice gratefully, but didn’t want anything else to eat. I sat down with her when she took a break because I started to feel my legs– I must have been standing there for hours, transfixed. “I didn’t know that marrying was so… strong,” I said. Raith nodded wearily. “Could you give me some of your strength?” she asked. Of course– I was ashamed of not having noticed earlier that she needed it.

The crowd was if anything larger. I spotted Athal, coming down the stairs of his tower, and grinning with all of his mind. “Goodness! the doctor!” I said to him, but he’d already arranged for Dushtan to come. “The baby boy, too!” but even that he had thought of.

At the end of the day as Raith got up, the old grandmother was standing there. “Is it so easy?” she asked. “Just pouring water over their hands?” “You say something, too,” I said, “but I think the Mother gives the words.” “I’ve been thinking,” the grandmother said. “If you two should want me to do that for you– I think I qualify. You have to be a woman who can’t have children any more, right?” “Yes, or none at all,” Raith said, and then our attention was taken by two children, no more than five and six years old, who wanted Raith to marry them too. “I think you’re too young to marry in the Valdyan way,” the grandmother said, and turning to me, “Can a Valdyan girl marry when she’s not bled yet?” I shook my head. “See? You could marry in the Iss-Peranian way. You” –pointing to the girl– “bring ten thousand gold pieces, and you” –the boy– “ten thousand soldiers.” “I don’t have ten thousand gold pieces!” the girl protested, and the boy, “I don’t know so many soldiers!” “Then you’ll have to wait until you’re older. And until then, not even a kiss.” They were shocked at that –after all, they loved each other so much!– but I said “Valdyan people do kiss before they’re married, if they love each other enough. Look!” and I kissed Raith, and the boy kissed the girl chastely on the cheek.

Raith was dropping with exhaustion, and I put an arm around her and said to the old woman, “I think it’s a good idea, but we’re too tired to decide now.” We went to our rooms, and there was doctor Dushtan, drinking a cup of tea in our reception room. I went to sit with her while the maids were bathing Raith. “Can I have some of that?” I asked. “Not really,” she said. “That’s awkward– I’m the king’s slave so I can drink tea, but you shouldn’t. All right, you can finish mine.” “You’re not a slave!” I said. She grinned. “No, but nobody here knows that.” She told me about Ruyin and Chatna, who she was sending with the next ship –tomorrow on the afternoon tide– to Valdyas, “and if the wind is favourable they’ll make it.” They had the right medicine, but just enough until Essle, and they’d need a doctor there too. “The baby boy I’m going to operate on tomorrow,” she said, “his guts are blocked, it’s either a growth or it’s because he’s getting the wrong kind of milk. If they’d given him cow’s milk he’d be dead already, goat’s milk has been saving his life until now.” “Could we find a woman who lost her baby, or has enough milk for two?” I asked, remembering a promise I’d made Surtaunu. “I’ll ask around,” Dushtan said, “I think we probably can.”

I had my face washed by Ishi and joined Raith in bed– yes, it was empty, though at least ten pairs of eyes were looking from the edges of the room. I was long past caring. Raith was all hard knots and sinews and for the first time since I’ve known her she looked old. I thought, I know now what she’ll look like when she’s eighty and I also know that I’ll still love her. I stroked every square inch of her, with hands and lips and mind, until she dissolved, and started to look like herself, and responded; and then we needed clean sheets yet again.

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 explain that this was normal for at least some Valdyans, and if he looked at the king he’d see that he had a speckled face, but he wasn’t one of the king’s servants so he didn’t get close enough to him. Also, he couldn’t understand that the king hadn’t even taken his clothes off when his cousin, all dressed and painted, had been ready to receive him. “The king has a queen at home,” I told him, “and he misses her so much that he won’t look at any other woman.” “If he misses her so much,” the boy said, “he should be glad of other women!” This made the grandmother chuckle and say to him, “The day you understand that a man can miss his wedded wife so much that he doesn’t want other women, that’ll be the day you can marry.” This boy had been born a few years after the Khas conquered the city, she told me, and he’d never known anything else.

Girls appeared with armfuls of clothes. “Oh! You’re here! We have to dress you, because his majesty the king is going to have breakfast in your rooms!” And dressed we were, and our hair bullied into submission, and our faces painted, which Raith promptly spoiled by taking me in her arms and kissing me until the paint ran. “I think we can appear in the king’s presence without paint on our faces,” Raith said, but the girls wouldn’t have any of that, “what will he think of us?” and did it all over again. I can tell them all apart now, but there’s only one I know by name: Ishi, who had a Khas father and a Síthi mother and is perhaps fourteen years old.

Athal was already in our reception room, eating melon seeds and spitting out the skins at a nearby goat. He hit it nine times out of ten, and the goat ate them all. “That’s new to me, a palace full of goats,” I said. “Do you know Moyri?” he asked. Of course I did, I said, and he went on to tell me about Moyri’s parents who had lived here (well, not here as such, but in the Temple of Dayati) and come back with stories about Síthi life before the Khas. I should be glad that there were only goats and not spotted cats the size of a goat who could eat people. “It was very different then,” he said, “I don’t think that there’s any family now that’s still intact.” I told him about the teenaged boy’s cousin, who he had said wasn’t his real cousin but that was what he called her. “Talking about girls in your bed, you won’t escape unscathed!” Athal said. Raith was there by then, and I could feel her raising her eyebrows. “I’ve already had a proposal of marriage for you. Before he’d ever seen you. And now that he has seen you he hasn’t retracted it, but he says he’s willing to marry two women, or three, or four.” Raith’s eyebrows went up even more, and I got more and more interested– not in marrying this man, but in the wildness of the ideas. “The first to bear his children, the second–” “To keep the first happy,” I said, squeezing Raith’s arm. “Exactly. The third for the people at home, and the fourth because he’s in love with her.”

Wait a moment– was this actually serious? “I think I’ve seen him, too” I said. “That young officer of Beguyan’s, what’s his name, Shishe Namak.” Yes, that was the man. Well, I’d liked him, but to say yes to a proposal on the basis of that? “I don’t think I’m obliged to provide heirs for Solay,” I said. “No, you’re not obliged to,” Athal said. “We do need a dynasty, though. We’ll need a princess for my second son.” Radan? The earnest-looking toddler I’d seen taking his first tentative steps at his nurse’s hand? But Athal went on, “If we can find a princess within a few years, they can get married right away.” It sounded reasonable, though strange, at the time –I remember saying that sixteen seemed a more sensible age to marry than six– but now that I’m writing this I’m appalled: has Athal really become so foreign that he intends to use his son as a playing-piece? He married for love, he let Aidan marry for love, he never objected to me following my heart; for all I know Father and Mother married for love, too. I wonder what Iss-Peranian witch has been talking to him.

We must have stopped talking about the dynasty at some point, because Raith was saying that if she were in charge, she’d send five hundred or a thousand soldiers to the north to stop the fighting, and if anyone didn’t listen then, send them to the fields. “I’ve thought about that,” Athal said, “but these are not Khas, it’s Síthi against Síthi and nobody can tell me what it’s about.” “Send me,” I said, “I’m probably not as daunting as you, and people do tend to tell me things.” Raith started to protest that it was too dangerous, but Athal thought it was a good idea. “I’ll want an escort,” I said, “not too many, just enough to keep me safe. Where do I go to organise that?” “You should talk to Faran,” he said and got Ishi to take me there. “Am I dressed properly to go out?” I asked her. “And to ride a horse?” She didn’t know about horses, but these clothes I was wearing would be perfectly suitable, not like hers! True, what she was wearing was very skimpy; for me it would not only be unfortunate, but uncomfortable as well because any skin I exposed to the sun would turn red at once.

Ishi took me out of the women’s quarters and consigned me to a bunch of courtiers, both men and women, who eventually delivered me to an office like a beehive. A Valdyan man came towards me, talking to everyone he passed. His skin was blotchy red and blistered, his nose ran, and he couldn’t help scratching at one spot or another at times. “I should really get out of here and go home,” he said, “but my memory is my curse, I know everybody and remember everything and Athal knows that far too well.” “Faran, I presume?” I said. “Yes, got that in one. What can I do for you, your highness?” I explained what I wanted to do and that I’d need a handful of soldiers. “Can do,” he said, “Valdyan? Iss-Peranian? Síthi? Men or women?” I said Valdyans, please, and men as well as women. With Síthi warring factions taking Síthi soldiers along would probably only complicate things more. He nodded. “I’ll send a company of the Order as well to back you up — promised Athal I’d not do that to people any more without telling them. Do you agree?” “I’d be glad of that,” I said, “though I don’t intend to do any fighting, just see someone from each side and hear what they’re disagreeing about.”

All the time we were talking, Faran was also looking over people’s shoulders, checking calculations when asked, making encouraging noises, speaking to this and that person, organising little things– I was getting more and more impressed with him. No wonder Athal didn’t want to do without him! I don’t remember how we got to that subject, but suddenly he was telling me about all the Síthi girls saying they were still maidens when it was very clear they weren’t. “Can you believe that I have never had a man?” I asked, and he took it as a pass at him –silly of me not to have realised that– and started preening his nonexistent mustache, but just then, fortunately, my escort arrived.

The captain was Ruyin, a very young man, I think about Aidan’s age (but then he’s a captain too: soldiers grow up very fast in a war). “Did you know we had backup?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Is that really the Order of the Sworn?” He didn’t know –he wasn’t semte himself– and I tried to find them but couldn’t, probably because I’m not as gifted as Athal and they were quite some way behind us and I didn’t know any of them. Ah well, good that they were there at least. Ruyin told me about his girl, a Síthi (probably with a Khas father too) he’d met in the victory feasts, and then a little about the unrest in the north, that it wasn’t like the Guilds in Valdyas where the issue is who has the king’s ear, and one is clearly good or clearly bad: in this dispute neither side was all bad, and neither side was all good either. I didn’t mind that: I’d be wanting to hear both sides anyway. “You know, it’s easy to tell you things,” he said. “And hard to listen to you.” Well, I hadn’t been saying much to listen to! “Faran taught me that, to listen to people. You know what it’s like, you seduced a woman too. When you listen in a particular way…” “They know you’re interested,” I said, spot on.

We were passing a lot of windowless whitewashed buildings. “People don’t really live in the city,” Ruyin said. “They live behind their walls, they don’t go out. There aren’t any markets either.” How did they get their vegetables then? I knew that some of the great houses had been like villages, where they grew their own, but these didn’t look large enough to have more than one little courtyard inside. “The rich people have them sent in,” Ruyin said, “and the poor people just don’t have any.” He stopped at the entrance to a narrow alley. “Would you like to meet my girl?” “Oh yes, please,” I said, and we both dismounted. Ruyin went into the alley first and came back to get me. At the end there was a rough shelter of stones that looked like they’d been liberated from the palace, covered with a roof of reeds. Inside, it was almost completely taken up by a mattress like the one on our bed, probably also from the palace. A young woman was sitting on it. I sat down with her before she could get up and introduced myself. Her name was something like Chatna, I don’t know how to spell it. She was shy, perhaps a little in awe of me-the-princess, and I had trouble understanding the dialect she spoke, but Ruyin was around to interpret and encourage her. “Lady Raith is a priestess of the Mother, right?” he asked. I started to say no, but she had done all those marriages, so I supposed yes. “You see, she won’t accept anything from me except when we’ve made love, until we’re married, and she’ll only be married by someone from the temple that her grandmother was thrown out of, and that was the temple of the Mother.” “I’m sure she’ll marry you,” I said –I’d see about that myself– and then I sensed that there was something very wrong with the girl, probably the sickness that Cora had been so afraid of, and Ruyin would do well to see a doctor himself. I’d see about that too. “If you come to the palace tomorrow morning I’ll make sure that Raith knows about you.”

As we went back to the escort, Ruyin said, “Chatna knows who you ought to talk to in the north, on one side at least. She’s sort of related to them.” Apparently that was one of the things she’d been whispering to him. Suddenly he grabbed my arm. “She’s sick, isn’t she?” and when I nodded, “Then I’ve probably got it too.” I said I’d make sure that there was a doctor who could see them. “She was so determined to keep working until we’re married. You know what it’s like.” Unfortunately, I did indeed know– not from experience, but I’ve seen and heard a lot in only two days.

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 and he was very kingly in something dark blue. He tells me he hasn’t worn the same clothes twice since he pacified the city around the feast of Timoine (and it’s almost the feast of Anshen now). He doesn’t know what happens to the clothes, perhaps they sell them in the city.

Solay is built mostly on mud, but after all that water it felt delightfully solid. I sat down on the ground when I was done hugging Athal and saw Raith being hugged by a tall dark woman who could only be Bebakshi. That was a hug that could have made me jealous if I hadn’t known who it was. It’s evident that they love one another dearly, and Raith told me later that if she’d had a daughter it might have been that way. Bebakshi is family, it’s just that I still have to work out what kind of family she is of me because obviously she can’t be my sister if she’s Raith’s daughter.

We were taken from the quay –a temporary affair off the palace hill, not to be confused with the big harbour, and the small harbour, and the old harbour; I think I’ve seen them all but I can’t keep them straight yet– to the palace. This is a large mostly white building or rather a complex of buildings, parts of it in disarray or burnt or being reconstructed or all of those. It has a large broken dome that Athal is leaving as a reminder for the people of Solay. Also, I suppose, because things like temples are in more need of rebuilding. There was a courtyard with a pool where they’d made us a bath. Blessed warm water! Without any salt in it! We had several women to wash us, and oil our hair, and grumble at mine (I don’t know if they grumbled at Raith’s, but they must have), and put a clean and surprisingly fitting linen shirt on me, and lots of other things, including jewellery. Then I got to take most of it off again, because we were shown to our rooms in a wing of the palace. Athal said that we might want to take a house in the town but he’d rather have us close to him, and the rooms looked perfectly all right, especially the very large bed with a mosquito-net draped over it.

I slept, until I was woken by shrieks: a small naked boy being chased by a slightly larger girl carrying something that looked like his clothes. I slept again, until I was woken by a snore that I discovered was Raith’s, so I snuggled against her back and slept some more. All that time young women were making soft music, and waving big fans to cool us, but I didn’t notice much of it until I woke up again because Raith was kissing me in quite an intimate place. She’d made a seal, but it looked as if people could just look through it, and it would have made me very uncomfortable if she hadn’t been completely unfazed herself. I said that perhaps I’d prefer a townhouse after all, but according to Raith that wouldn’t be any more private, and if we shut ourselves in a sealed room people would worry. And anyway, after a while it was easy enough to ignore whoever else was in the room; they didn’t seem to be paying attention until someone scrabbled at the seal because she thought we’d like wash-water and a cool drink.

While I was sitting up in bed something pushed against my back. It was a little goat, trying to eat the sheet. The girl I’d seen earlier caught it and explained –my Síthi was getting better all the time– that the boy should have kept it in check. “It’s for the milk,” she said. I didn’t understand that at first, because the goat was far too small to milk, and moreover it looked like a billy-goat. But obviously the mother goat needed it to be able to give milk in the first place. “For the baby,” she said. “Doesn’t the baby’s mother have any milk?” Raith asked, but it turned out that the baby’s mother had died.

Then it was time for the informal dinner that Athal had planned with only us, him, Bebakshi and her intended (a very large smith from Rychie Tal-Serth, looking uncomfortable because everybody else was clearly either noble or otherwise a celebrity), and General Beguyan and his wife. We were taken there by a lady with a tinge of questionable morality about her, who disappeared, along with most of the servants and guards, when Athal gave her a sign. We weren’t precisely alone, there were lots of servers and musicians and I think even a few dancers, but it was intimate enough. Beguyan’s wife Mehili is a delightful little thing, all sweetness and poetry. (She’s also a great administrator; he doesn’t only take her along for recreation, but because he’s a leader of men, not a pusher of papers.) Beguyan himself is as ugly as they come, short legs and long arms and a face like a turnip left in the cellar until summer, but a very good man as well as an excellent general.

The conversation seemed to be light and inconsequential, but all the same they were evaluating me. Eventually the general and his wife seemed to have come to the conclusion that I’m a practical person with little use for poetry, but apparently good enough for Raith, who they have a very high opinion of.

The next morning –I can’t remember going to bed– we were awake very early for some reason. Raith asked me, out of the blue, if I could swim. “Yes,” I said, “Father taught us in Valdie Liorys.” I don’t actually remember learning to swim, only that Father taught Aidan when he was four and I was nine or so and Athal and Alyse and I already could. Raith took me to the courtyard with the pool. It was long and deep enough to have a proper swim in. Apparently it had been a swimming-bath for the emperor’s women!

Again it was clear that we couldn’t do anything unobserved: as we came out of the pool there were several young women with towels. The one who handed me mine looked half Khas and half Síthi and smiled at me bashfully.

When we were back in our bedroom Raith beckoned me to an unobtrusive little door. A servants’ door, leading to a thatched annex of the main building. It was full of people of all ages, all clearly Síthi. A large white goat was asleep in a corner. The boy who should have kept the goat in check was holding a crying baby, trying to get him to drink, but he was too young to understand the use of a cup and sucking milk from his minder’s fingers was too inefficient. I suddenly remembered the orphaned baby we’d had in the hospital in Veray, who we’d given milk from a cup with a hole in the bottom, and resolved to speak to a potter about it.

Our young women were getting worried: when we came back they were waiting for us and asked whether we’d have breakfast in our rooms or with the king. “With the king,” I said, “if the king approves, of course.” The king did approve, and we were shown to his apartments, a suite of rooms at the top of the palace tower. It had been the emperor’s. Raith thought it strange that it was on a top floor– Síthi usually lived on the ground floor only. Athal said that the emperor had had his rooms at the top of the building as a show of bravery. For him it had the advantage that he was served only by his own Valdyan and Iss-Peranian soldiers and didn’t find random Síthi girls in his bed as he had when he was sleeping downstairs. He is pining for Raisse so much! I hope he’ll finish briefing Raith soon so he can go home and see her and his new daughter.

Breakfast turned seamlessly into Athal showing Raith the ropes of running the city. I watched them for a bit, but I couldn’t do anything: Athal has turned into a proper king, and Raith is of course an experienced baroness; I’m the practical person, and though I can do some administration if I have to I’d rather be where people are working and work along with them. “Can you spare me for an hour?” I asked, and went to find the potter. First, back to the servants’ quarters, where the old woman sent a young girl with me to navigate the service corridors of the palace. We ended up in a courtyard where artisans had their workplaces. The palace had its own potter’s workshop, not surprising because of the number of people living there. I explained what I was looking for: a cup, about that size, with a spout at the bottom so a baby could drink milk from it. “Like a tit?” the potter asked doubtfully. “Yes! Exactly like a tit!” And he gave me a thing like an upside-down bottle that they used to water plants slowly. I said I’d try it out and come back if I needed something different. The thing worked, but it was too rough for the baby to drink comfortably and the milk would seep in and stink. “You need a glazed one,” said the young girl, and ran away, presumably to the potter.

When I was on my way back to Athal’s apartments at last, Raith and Athal were coming out. The next item was a tour through the city, and indeed there were horses and guards waiting. I’d secretly hoped for an elephant, but Athal said people didn’t see you when you were on an elephant, and the Síthi elephants were even bigger than the Iss-Peranian ones like those in Valdis. With all the guards around us I didn’t see much of the city except buildings, but I could see that there was much rebuilding going on. I’m so eager to get my hands on something! I just hope I can do it without more soldiers than absolutely necessary to keep safe.

At one point we passed a gate and we were in the Iss-Peranian part of the city. The Valdyan guards were replaced with Iss-Peranian ones. Beguyan was there, too, with a man not much older than me who is in charge of that neighbourhood, Shishe Namak. Beguyan is going home with his wife and most of his army as soon as the harvest is in and the rain starts. It’s very nice weather now –a bit warm, but I’m almost used to it– but it will rain soon for weeks on end, relentlessly, ceaselessly, mercilessly. Raith has already seen a rainy season and she’s not looking forward to it, but the crops need it. The grain we brought in the White Whale won’t grow here –they have a special kind of grain that doesn’t mind growing in the mud, and rice too, which actually needs to be in water– but Athal is going to send it where they have the most need of it, probably Il Ayande.

That evening there was a smallish banquet for about forty officials: Valdyans and Iss-Peranians, no Síthi. Bebakshi and her smith weren’t there either, but Uncle Ferin was so I could sit next to him and give him Talvi’s letter, which he spent the rest of the meal reading over and over again. He should really go home with Athal; if Aumen Síth needs a Valdyan general someone else can have the honour.

Athal was drinking from a large golden cup, filled from a golden pitcher, After the meal he told us that we should do that too as soon as possible: there was pomegranate juice in it, or melon juice, so he could be seen drinking all evening without getting drunk on Síthi wine. Apparently the priests in the old Aumen Síth had been drunk from morning till evening, because only servants were allowed to drink anything but wine. We’d had iced fruit juice earlier, but that was ice, Athal said, it didn’t count as a drink.

We were sitting in a courtyard in the cool evening. At one point Raith spotted some movement on the other side: the boy, the baby, and the goat. The boy started to flee, but we asked him to come over to us. The boy gave me the baby to hold and, proudly, a smooth glazed version of the bottle I’d acquired earlier, decorated with flowers. “Is he your brother?” Athal asked, but no, “I found him, he doesn’t have any parents.” The baby fell asleep in my lap, the boy fell asleep with his arms around Raith’s knees, the goat fell asleep too, I think, and when Athal left us to go up we carried both children to our bed and went to sleep as well.