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

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

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

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

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

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

Halla and I got the letter done, and on the day of Mizran Mialle and I — Halla really didn’t want to come — were going to take it to Relsinay. I put the letter under my cap because I wasn’t going to let anyone see I had it before I needed to give it to someone! It was easy to go over the bridge, lots of people were going over the bridge but we saw nobody we knew, except one of the bridge guards, I think Coran, who spoke to us but we promised we’d be back. There was a busy market on the other side, but it didn’t look as if it was the kind of market where people went to buy vegetables or clothes or pots and pans, but more like a cattle market only without cattle, men and women talking to each other about loads and shipments and prices. And we hadn’t been in the crowd for a count of ten before a girl came up to me and showed me her tits and said she wanted a kiss. “I don’t kiss strange girls,” I said, and then she thought Mialle was my girlfriend and made […]

Well, I’ve been here in Nalenay for nearly a year and a half now, and lots of things have happened! Lochan had been right about the Left Hand Inn but he took pity on us and showed us where apprentices can get a beer, called the Underground, and it is underground, in a cellar! It’s always damp and dark and smelly but the beer is cheap and not bad, and twopence will get you a bowl of hot soup with a piece of bread. So that was where we mostly went if it wasn’t any sort of weather to be outside. Both of our masters had become richer. And fatter, and better dressed, and higher-up in the temple of Mizran (I could see that by Master Rhanion’s stole, he now had one that was longer and wider and with more embroidery, some gold thread on it as well). We thought it was because of the folding knives, because there was a new workshop on the burnt plot, sort of like a shed, full of kids our age and younger who did nothing but put knives together all day! I don’t know who made the blades, it wasn’t our workshop! And […]

I had some gender confusion as a player, because Lesla is persistent, so Ferin, roughly the same age in the first couple of sessions, ended up with some girly manners. Just as I was deciding I might retcon him into a girl after all I thought of a perfectly plausible in-world explanation: he grew up as the youngest in a house full of women, of course he’s got girly manners! Let’s see if the smithy will beat those out of him. (But he’ll probably stay fond of nice fabrics and just a little vain. If he’d been small and weak instead of big and strong, he might have become a tailor instead.) So there I was in Master Rhanion’s workshop! There were four of us sleeping in the attic, Jeran and I on one side of the blanket that hung in the middle and Ayneth and Layse on the other side. Layse was a journeyman already, the other three apprentices. I woke up to the smell of pancakes. But Alyse wouldn’t give us any before we’d washed at the pump again. I wet my hair to make it stay out of my eyes. “It’s too long, I want it off,” […]

Prologue. The real campaign will start about two years later. Hey, I’m going to tell you how I went to town to get apprenticed and met a kid from another village and didn’t join the army. I’m Ravei Ferin, eleven and a season when this happened, just come from Ashinay where my Ma is the smith. I have sisters. Rava is a carpenter, she just got her journeyman’s letter and married her sweetheart on the strength of that. And Aine has been working at Aunt Alyse’s farm forever but this time Aunt Alyse hung a wreath of flowers round her neck on the Feast of Archan and said she was a full farmhand now, not just a helper. So Ma grumbled because she was going to need two lots of twelve riders, one for me to be apprenticed and one for Aine in case Aunt Alyse wanted her to buy in. But the Feast was nice! I wore my new embroidered shirt, and my cousin Jilan wore a shirt exactly like it, I’d made both and he’d embroidered both because I sew better and he embroiders better, fair’s fair! We roasted a goat and there was berry pudding and cheese […]