Liar's Oath

Chapter Five

Patiently, Luap trimmed another goosequill for the boy who might, if he lived long enough, make a scribe. The broken quill had not been the boy’s fault; he could not control the spasms of coughing when they came. Garin was asleep now, and when he woke would find a new quill ready-trimmed. Luap wished he had better skills, some magic to heal whatever raged in the boy’s lungs. So few had his gift of language, almost elven in its grace. He concentrated on that task, to avoid thinking about Gird’s “prophecy,” and the rumors already coming back to him in colorful variety.

“You spoil them,” came a voice from the doorway. Luap set his lips in a smile and turned. Not the woman he’d wanted to see, this gray morning, but Gird’s unmanageable daughter, back from the eastern wars to quarrel with her father . . . or so he saw it. In all fairness, Raheli often had the right on her side, but she had even less tact than Gird, if that were possible. And with Gird sleeping off a drunken binge, her tongue would be all edges; he wondered when she’d arrived, and if anyone had told her yet. In answer to her complaint, he tried a shrug with one shoulder. She scowled.

“The boy’s sick,” he said. “It’s not his fault. I don’t trim quills for all of them.”

“I should hope not. D’you have the latest version of the Code?” Just the slightest emphasis on “latest”; whatever she thought of Gird’s incessant revisions, she would not criticize her father to him. In the same way, copying her father’s courtesy, she had continued to call him Selamis long after everyone else used Luap. Now she and Gird both used his nickname more often than not, but he remembered their care to preserve his own identity.

“Three copies.” He stood, foraged in the pigeonholes above the work table, and handed her one, hoping that hint would keep her from taking it.

“Good,” she said cheerfully; he anticipated what she would say and managed not to wince visibly. “Then I can have this, and you’ll still have some . . . I’ll have copies made for the eastern granges. You won’t need to worry about it.”

The end of his tongue would never heal, he was sure, from biting it. Rahi’s eyes challenged him, daring him to argue. Tall as Gird, not quite as broad, though the padded tunic she wore gave her more heft than she owned, she stood foursquare in his doorway and dared him. Despised him. Lord of justice, he let himself pray, and then dropped it. She was Gird’s daughter; he was Gird’s luap; he had no right to do whatever he thought of.

Not that she’d ever know what he thought of. That he hid far inside, from both Rahi and Gird . . . that Rahi reminded him of his dead wife, that he had waked from dreams of stroking her scarred face back into beauty with his magery, erasing the ruin of war, pretending (how long would such pretense last? he had demanded of himself) that she was Erris come back . . . and making her love him, as Erris had.

Which would never happen, no matter what magery he used; he could not do it.

“It would be a help,” he said mildly, handing over the thick roll, enjoying her surprise at his cooperation. She even relaxed, a rare sight, and came forward to take it, bending then to look at the sleeping boy.

“One of yours?” The implication was clear: one of his meant one of the mageborn. Luap shrugged again.

“I don’t know, to be honest. No parents he can remember . . . he came out of the taverns here in Finyatha. Voice like crystal, and had taught himself to read. He has a talent for words, that one, and takes in knowledge as damp clay takes footprints. The singer’s gift is no commoner in my father’s people than in my mother’s—” At that not-subtle reminder of his dual heritage, he saw the long scar on her face darken. He went on smoothly. “—so he could belong to either, or both.”

“That priest says the mageborn need no training to wake their powers.” That priest was Arranha, but Raheli would not say his name. She liked nothing mageborn, and Arranha’s mildness irked her, giving no excuse for her dislike.

“Not to wake, but to use . . . or at least, to control.” Luap wondered what she was getting at now.

“So how can Gird say the children are safe?” She sounded puzzled more than angry, but underneath that puzzlement Luap sensed a decision already reached. She did not understand her father’s reasoning, and would go her own way.

“I’m not sure—”

Her hand flashed outward, demanding silence; Luap bit off the rest of his words and waited. “I’m trying, you see, to follow him. I know it is not the child’s fault, to be mageborn, to have the magicks inborn, any more than it is a strong child’s fault to have strength. But the magicks are weapons; it’s like handing a strong child a sword or a pike—pots will break, if not heads. If the powers can wake without training, and it takes training to control them—but we cannot let them be trained, lest they turn against us—”

“Why would they?”

Her eyes were dark, her mother’s eyes Gird had often said, but they seemed full of light as a hawk’s eyes, staring through him to distant lands he could not see. “Why would they not, knowing we killed their parents . . . or most of them? Knowing their magicks gave them power of vengeance, power of rule . . . why would they not turn against us?”

“You don’t trust fairness? Gird does.”

She did not quite snort at that, but she glared, this time directly at him. “Fairness! Gods know we need fairness, and demand it, but for all the fairness lodged in human hearts you might whistle down a hedgerow forever, hoping to call out a skreekie with a bag of gold. I’ve seen little enough fairness, nor you either. Fairness would have had you on a throne—”

“Fairness forbade me,” said Luap. “Your father—Gird—trusts fairness. In the end, he says—”

“In the end, when all men are wise and honest . . . and do you, too, believe that will happen?”

He had changed this much: he could not lie to her, even though he wanted Gird to be right, and her to be wrong, as much as he’d ever wanted anything. “No,” he said. “I don’t. But I think it’s worth working toward.”

“Men and women aren’t gnomes,” said Raheli, as if he’d argued that point.

“No,” he said. “They aren’t.” He wished she would go. He wished she would go now, quickly, before the Autumn Rose arrived . . . or he wished the Rosemage had his sensitivity and would delay her arrival until Rahi left. But she would not deviate a hairsbreadth from her way, that one, and if her way now aimed at more than her own pride’s joy, it was still a straight uncompromising trail. Go away, he thought at Rahi, knowing it would do no good. Even if she could feel a pressure from him, she would resist it.

“Will you marry again?” she asked, in a tone consciously idle. He knew it was not. Several of the men had offered for her, before she made it clear to everyone that she would not remarry. She probably thought women had offered for him.

“I doubt it,” said Luap. “You know my story . . . and besides, a man marries to have children. What could I offer mine, but suspicion? You—everyone—would think it meant I was still thinking of the throne.”

“I thought you might marry . . . her.” Only one her lay between them. Luap said nothing, but Rahi persisted. “You know. Calls herself a rose . . . I say thorny. . . .”

Luap closed his eyes against the explosion: the Autumn Rose was in hearing distance, only a pace or so away. Silence. He opened his eyes, to find Rahi lodged in his doorway like a stone in a pipe, and the Rosemage’s light streaming around her like water.

“You don’t have to like me,” the Rosemage said. “You don’t have to understand one tenth of what I have done—”

“I understand quite well.” Rahi’s accent thickened; her back held the very shape of scorn.

“You do not.” The Rosemage angry regained her youth; color flushed her cheeks and her light blurred lines of age and weather. Luap’s mouth dried. He was bred to find her beautiful; her voice and the magic she embodied sang along his veins. Despite himself, he could not believe that the peasants knew what real love was. They could not feel this wholeness, this blend of body, mind, spirit, magery. “You hate me for things I never did; you despise me for not doing what in fact I accomplished.”

“You never bore a child.” Rahi, like her father, seemed to condense in anger: immovable, implacable.

“That’s not fair!” That shaft had gone home; the Rosemage’s light flickered, and true anguish edged her voice. “You know it’s not—its—”

“It’s women’s warring,” Rahi said, her own voice calm now that she felt her victory. “And for all that, lady, neither have I. You could have thrown that back at me.” She glanced over her shoulder at Luap. “Don’t marry this one, or they’ll never believe you a luap.” Before either of them could answer, she’d shouldered past the Rosemage and disappeared down the corridor.

“That miserable . . .”

“Peasant she-wolf is the term you’re looking for,” Luap said softly, nodding to the still-sleeping boy. “Prickly, a trait you both share. Is it, in fact, an effect of barrenness?” He hated himself for that, but he dared not show his very real sympathy, not now. Her face whitened, as her light died, and then her intellect took over.

“I don’t know. Possibly. Her people, with their emphasis on giving as the sign of power, would obviously value childbearing . . . but all peoples must, or they die away. So she and I, childless, though each with good reason, know we cannot meet our own standards. I never thought of it that way, but it could be.” She sounded interested now, not angry. She hitched a hip onto his work table, and swung the free foot idly. Even relaxed like that, she had more grace than Rahi.

“I try to think what the difference is, between her and Gird,” Luap said. “Surely it’s not that women bear grudges more—at least, Gird says his wife never did. But Rahi is not going to trust us, not ever.”

“Not me, not ever.” The Rosemage’s hands clenched, then relaxed. “I suppose you’ve heard the full name she gave me?”

Luap had, but he was not about to admit it. She waited a moment, then went on. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I might even think it funny, if crude, if she’d pinned it on someone else. Thorny bottom . . . and she’s as thorny as I am. . . .”

“True enough.” Luap let himself smile in a way that had, in his youth, worked its way among girls. “And here I am, poor lone widower, caught between you two briars, like a shorn wether in a thicket.”

She laughed. “You? Don’t try that with me, king’s son; you are no gelding. Far from it.”

“By choice. . . .”

“By choice and good sense, you’ve chosen to father no more children. You know what would come of it; you would not risk the land or the child. But you need not forswear the love of women, especially women who can’t bear children. And the two of us—you may feel caught between us, but not in impotence.”

“I do wish,” Luap said, turning away as he felt his face grow hot, “that you were not my elder in years and experience. It’s difficult.” He hoped she had not caught his surprise: he had not thought that he might lie safely with barren women. Already his mind ran through the possibilities.

“So it is. So I might intend it to be. D’you think I like having that name tacked to me? Do you not realize that she has seen to it that no man will even ask?”

“Are you suggesting—?”

“Maybe.” She eyed him; he wasn’t sure she understood what he’d meant. When the boy stirred, choked, and began coughing, he was glad.

“Easy, lad.” Luap lifted the boy’s shoulders, offered a spoonful of honeyed fruit juice. He felt a constant tremor, as the boy tried not to cough.

“And how are you today, Garin?” the Rasemage asked.

“Better, lady.” The boy’s lips twitched, attempting a smile, then another cough took him. He curled into Luap’s arm; Luap stroked his hair. This boy would say “better” on his deathbed, which, if he didn’t really improve, this would soon be.

“You could heal that,” came the Rosemage’s murmur, just within hearing. Luap could feel his teeth grating; he could not heal it, not without claiming the king’s magic as his own, using it . . . and he had sworn he would not. Sworn to himself as well as to Gird, to the gods he believed in a little more each year. His father had used magery for darker aims, yet Luap believed he had intended better . . . surely as a boy he had not been wholly cruel. He had never asked any who might know, including the Rosemage.

“You know better,” he said to her, wishing he dared a slap of power at her and knowing she would laugh at him even if it worked.

“Even the peasants know we had healing powers once,” she said conversationally. Garin’s coughs slowed; he gasped, his heart racing beneath Luap’s hand.

“Little enough lately,” Luap said. “Gird says he heard rumors, tales from old granddads, nothing recent. You say you lack them.”

“Mmm.” She didn’t pursue it, for which he was less grateful than he felt he should be. By her tone she would pursue it later. Garin lay back, spent and silent, barely able to sip a few spoonsful of broth. He was going to die, and not sing those songs, and although there was no way Luap could blame Gird, he did anyway. Gird cared for this boy no less than any other, but no more. It had seemed to Luap that if he could interest Gird, if he could only get Gird to understand why the boy was important, he would then do something and the boy would live. What that something might be, he could not of course define. But Gird’s response had been, as always, impersonally compassionate. He hated seeing anyone suffer; he had sat beside the boy while Luap slept, on the worst nights, comforting him as tenderly as a mother; but he had shaken his head at Luap’s vehemence, insisting that this boy’s death was no more tragic than another’s.

Was it because so many of his own children had died or disappeared? Because Raheli would bear him no grandchildren? Or was it the gnomish influence?

“I can’t believe Gird would really mind that,” the Rosemage said softly. Luap started, and glanced at the boy, who lay dozing now, unaware. “Healing, I mean.”

“I can’t do it.” His hands had fisted; he flattened them with an effort. “Arranha says I’d have to claim all the magery—that it would be like trying to see only green, or only red, to use only the healing. And he’s not even sure I’ve got it. Besides, as you very well know, I promised Gird and the gods that I would not become a magelord. No more magicks: that’s what I said, and what he holds me to.”

“You’ve asked him about this?”

“Not specifically, no. He knows, though. He knows what it would take, and my oath binds me.” Never mind he had broken it more than once, by intention and later by accident. Never mind that time in the cave; no one would know that until—unless—he told. Where he could, he was loyal to it.

“You should ask him. He’s a farmer; they care about living things. For healing, he might let you try—”

“No.” His power bled into that; the word ached with power. She looked at him, opened her mouth, and shut it again. He wondered if she knew he was lying. He wondered so many things she might know, and he dared not ask—better that she think he knew already, or didn’t care to know, than that he hungered for that knowledge he lacked.

“I hope he’s better soon,” the Rosemage said, putting out a hand to Garin’s hair. Then she left, without saying more, and Luap sat struggling with his unruly desires.

Soon enough he heard, from down the corridor, Rahi’s voice raised to Gird, and Gird’s gusty bellow in reply. He did not want to know what she said, or what Gird said to her; he could imagine it well enough. Gird’s taste for ale had been nearly disastrous once in the war; he’d conquered it then. Now, in peace, why shouldn’t an old man have some pleasure? But Rahi would have none of that; he had overheard much the same quarrel before. She would drag up times past, from her childhood; Gird would glower for days.

The silence, abrupt and startling, drew him from his musings. Had the woman murdered him? Had he clouted her? He heard what might have been sobs. Should he investigate, or leave them to settle things?

“You blundering old fool!” Rahi said. She had waited in the corridor, trying not to hear Luap and the Autumn Rose, trying to calm herself, but when she looked in Gird’s door, her anger flared again. Gird slouched against his work table, eyes red-rimmed and bleary. He and his clothes were clean enough, but the room still smelled like a hangover. “I come all the way to Fin Panir to—to tell you something important, and you’ve gone off drinking with some lout who probably wasn’t even a veteran—”

“He was!” His voice rasped, as if he had a cold as well as a hangover. “He was from Burry, and I remembered him—”

“Better than you remembered your vow not to drink so much.” She bit back the other words she wanted to say; disappointment soured her rage. She had hoped for so much from this meeting. She needed so much from it.

“We’re not at war!” Whatever energy he’d summoned to achieve that bellow brought life to his eyes, “It’s not the same thing!”

“It’s still wrong.” Rahi realized she was going to cry an instant before the tears came, but too late to turn away and hide them. Sobs choked her as she fought them down; she could say nothing. Gird’s face changed, concern replacing anger.

“Rahi! What is it, lass?” He was still bigger than she, more massive; the hug she had imagined enclosed her before she knew it. He pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair, murmuring soothingly. She gave in to it, and let her tears fall. When they ceased, she felt odd, empty. Gird released her before she actually moved, and waited silently for what she might say. She wished that blowing her nose could take longer; she wasn’t sure what that would be.

“I . . . wanted to change my mind,” she said at last.

“About marrying again?” he asked. His voice held a note of hope. He had insisted all along that she could remarry, even if she could not bear children. With all the orphans war had made, he’d said, she could have a dozen children.

“No.” She took a long breath, swiped at her face with her sleeve, and looked him in the face. “I said once that I was your daughter no longer, only your soldier. But you’re right, the war’s over.”

“Lass—” A tentative smile, that widened when she managed to smile back. He reached out again, and she moved into another embrace. “Rahi, lass, you don’t know how I’ve needed that. . . .” She felt him sigh. “And there I was drunk, as you said. You’re right, it was stupid.”

“It’s all right,” said Rahi softly, “but not if you keep doing it.” She felt his chest shake with an almost-silent chuckle.

“Eh, that’s the daughter I remember. Tell me now, what changed your mind?”

Rahi told him about the dance in her grange, and the way she had felt restored to family connections. “And so I thought you might be feeling the same—not fitted in, with no vill or family—”

“I have, sometimes. I’ve tried to tell myself they’re all my kin, but I know they’re not. After Pidi disappeared that winter—” Gird shook his head. Raheli remembered her younger brother, her only surviving sib, riding off into the snow and never arriving at the next grange. She had not known until spring that he had disappeared; she would never know what had happened. That was the spring she had almost hated the grain that sprang green in the furrows.

“Da,” she said, feeling that old comfortable word in her mouth again. “Da, I still can’t marry—I still can’t have children—”

“I know. It’s all right, Raheli Mali’s child, it’s all right.” His eyes squeezed shut a moment; she saw the shine of tears when he opened them.

It was not all right, but it would be later. She still felt angry that he had been on another drunken binge; she could see by the color of his face and the change in the texture of his skin that he was not well. But her impulse had been right, to restore the family link she herself had broken—not broken, she told herself now, but set aside.

They sat awhile in silence, one on either side of the work table, then Rahi remembered the other good reasons she had found for coming the long way to Fin Panir. He had set her saddlebags on the floor; she retrieved them, and spread out her grange records and the comments from the past year’s courts.

“The soil’s different, where I am now, from home—where we lived before. The Code allows for easing the grange-set in a dry year, but where I am the farmers lose grain more often to mold in a wet year. If you allow the local Marshals to adjust the grange-set based on the yield of sound grain—that wouldn’t take a complete revision of the Code—”

“Ummph. You’re right. It already says at the Marshal’s discretion, so if we struck out ‘because of drought’ that would do. What else?”

“We had an odd case last spring come into the grange-court: a man, not mageborn, claimed to do magicks a new way.”

“A new way?”

“As scribes study writing, he said, so he studied magicks and performed them—for a fee. The judicar brought him to me because some of the people wanted him killed as a mageborn using forbidden power, or as a demon. When I investigated, it seemed to me that he performed what he agreed to, although I found the fee unduly high. And he had none of the appearance of a mageborn, and explained his magicks sufficiently that I feel sure he was not.”

“So what did you do?” asked Gird.

“Treated it as a matter of commerce. As someone in an unknown profession, of no registered guild, he had to demonstrate that he was honest and gave good weight, so to speak. The Code allows Marshals to impose a good-faith tax on newcomers who have no guild to speak for them, until their honesty is proven. He had not earned that much with his little shows of colored fire and magic crystals. I told him plainly that too many people disliked all magic for me to keep him safe, and if someone broke his head for him, he’d have only himself to blame. He got out of town safely enough, for I told the judicar and those listening that I would not take lightly an injury done him when he had done none yet himself. Since then I’ve heard nothing; he never came to the next grange west.”

“A new kind of magic . . .” said Gird. “I wonder what could be.”

“He thought of it as a craft, not some inborn talent, and I believe he was honest in that, at least.” Rahi frowned. “But without a guild, without knowledge of what his work is worth—assuming it’s honestly done—we have no way of knowing if his price is fair.”

Gird leaned back and tucked his fingers in his belt. “I suspect we can’t protect the sort of fool who will pay a man to work magicks. You were right, Rahi, to treat it as commerce, as a matter of contracts. Make sure he fulfills what he said; the buyer must decide if the price is fair.” He shook his head. “Though where we can fit that into the Code, I don’t know. I’ll talk to other Marshals about it.”

“I . . . quarreled with Luap, on the way here,” Rahi said. “It’s not his fault; I was angry about you.” She felt a childish pleasure in confessing that; he had always been more understanding with the child who confessed wrongdoing.

“He’s easy to quarrel with, this harvest time,” Gird said. “I don’t know what’s bothering him, unless it’s the old lady with her notions about royalty.”

“Someone mentioned an old lady. . . .” Rahi said. He looked as if he wanted to tell the tale; she wanted, at this moment, to listen to him talk.

“A good woman,” Gird said, lips pursed. “Her servant Eris says so, and so does Arranha. Widowed years ago. Very pious: but for worshipping the Sunlord, she’s much like old Tam’s mother, back home. She came in asking permission to put altar cloths she’d embroidered in the great Hall; it was clear she meant no mischief, so I said she might talk to Arranha about it.”

“But she’s mageborn? She knows Luap’s the king’s son?”

“Aye. She knows more than that—seems he’s not the last king’s son, but one before that. Garamis, his name was. She saw Luap himself as a child, when he lived in some lord’s house. It’s that, Arranha says, which upset him, though I can’t see why it would. Until we’re the oldest, if we live that long, there’s always someone who knew us as children. What harm in that?”

Rahi thought about it. It had been years since she had seen anyone from her vill. Would she feel anything strange if she met someone on the street who remembered her as a child? No—she had enjoyed being that child, that young woman. She would like to meet someone who remembered that. Had Luap not enjoyed being that boy? Surely it must have been easier than growing up a peasant child.

“It’s the change, I expect,” Gird went on. “Having to leave the lord’s house for a farmer’s cottage; he’s said before that was hard. He’s tried to forget that first bit, in recent years. And now she brings it back. One of the yeomen even told me she calls him ‘prince.’ ”

“But she shouldn’t!” Rahi was more shocked than she’d expected. Gird shook his head.

“She’s an old lady, lass. As stubborn as any village granny, for all she wears a fine dress and wears jewels. You know yourself that arguing with old ladies is like plowing water. If she wants to call Luap prince, she will; all I can do is hope it won’t go to his head.” He tried to stretch again and grimaced. “As yesterday’s ale has gone to mine. I’m too old for that, you’re right.”

Rahi grinned at him. “Remember the time that old dun cow got after me, for trying to ride her calf?” Gird’s slow smile widened, and he began to chuckle. “You told me that fools earned their lumps.”

“So I did. But that’s enough of that, lass, or I’ll decide you’re only my Marshal again. Marshals don’t lecture me—”

“I would,” said Rahi boldly. Gird groaned.

“You would, and your mother would have made a fine Marshal. Will you give over, now?”

“Aye. Shall I make up with Luap?”

“You might soothe his prickles a bit, and you might keep the edge of your tongue off the Autumn Rose, too. Don’t think I missed that bit of the quarrel.”

He had surprised her again. He could always do that, manage to know what no one suspected he knew, manage to do what no one suspected he could. Yet once he had done it, it always seemed right, inevitable.

“She irritates me,” Rahi said, “like a bed of nettles.”

“And why did we gather nettles?” He did not wait for her answer. “Because the plant is not evil, but harsh, and needs the right cook. Nourishing inside; irritating outside. There’s virtue in the Autumn Rose you’ve never found, lass: take it inside next time.”

Rebuke for rebuke, and although it stung, she could feel that he was right. She had never looked for anything in the Autumn Rose but what she knew she disliked. Finding that, she had been satisfied to despise her. She tried a last defense. “I have heard gossip that they might marry, Luap and the Rosemage.”

“Neither of them are such fools,” Gird said. “Nor are you, to believe it.”

“Well, if that’s your wish, I will study to adopt her as a sister,” Rahi said, half-joking. “No more quarrels, by my will.”

“You could have a worse sister,” Gird said. “She is as true as Luap once was false. Strange to us, but true.” He sounded very tired, now, and Rahi realized that it was nearly noon.

“I could make you a brew,” she said, half-shyly. “If Arya will let me use her hearth—”

His eyes brightened a moment. “That black stuff? No one else can do it right, lass, and if you’d fix that I’d be grateful.”

“Take your rest, then, and I’ll be up with it when it’s done.” This felt right, felt normal, even if it was the result of a drinking bout. She had Mali’s parrion, and her own skill; she knew she could mix healing brews better than most. She settled Gird with a cloth over his eyes and his feet propped up, then went back to the kitchen to ask permission to use the hearth.

She found Luap there, with a cook she had not met; Arya and Lia, the woman explained, had finished their day’s work. “Bakes the best bread, Arya,” the woman said. “But she trusts me to finish it now. I’m Meshi.”

Rahi explained what she needed, eyeing Luap, who looked completely comfortable as if he had been there awhile.

“Of course. No need to ask. The herbery’s through there—I expect you know—and I’ll just fetch the pot—” Meshi was a bustler, whose brisk busy movements around the room could make it seem crowded with only a few people in it. Rahi went out to the herbery, wondering why Luap seemed so relaxed with someone like that, and so tense with people she found more soothing. She found the herbs she needed, hardy aromatics that could be picked green until the first hard freeze. The rest of the ingredients were in the pantry, in neatly labelled pots and sacks: the same roots and barks used in cookery, most of them.

She set to work acutely aware of Luap watching her. Had he ever seen her at her own parrion? She couldn’t remember. She chopped, grated, and squeezed, as each ingredient demanded, then put all to simmer on the hearth. Meshi bustled past her one way and then the other, chopping vegetables into bowls, stirring them into a huge kettle of stew, taking Arya’s last batch of bread from the oven and putting the loaves on racks to cool, washing up behind herself as if she had an extra pair of hands. Rahi did not miss the looks Meshi gave Luap, or the occasional sharp glance she herself received. When she had the pot simmering to her satisfaction, Rahi offered to help with whatever Meshi had planned.

“Oh, dear, no—no need.” Meshi hardly paused in her path between pantry and kitchen. “I’m not rushed. Just you sit there and keep an eye on your own pot, so I won’t worry about it.” She came back from the pantry with an apronful of apples, and sat down to peel them. Rahi, rebuffed, ventured a smile at Luap. He nodded and gave her a smile that seemed more forced than natural . . . although after their earlier encounter she had to admit that only a forced smile would be natural.

“Meshi likes to feed people almost as much as I like to eat,” he said, with a nod to the cook. She smiled warmly at him, a curl of apple peel dangling from the knife.

“I like to feed those as know good cooking from bad,” she said. “Luap’s one to know if I change a single spice in my preserves.”

“My parrion was cooking and herblore,” Rahi said, feeling unaccountably shy.

“Was it now?” Meshi looked up, interested. “I thought you looked more deft than most who cook for need and not love. And you gave that up to be a Marshal, eh?” Rahi wondered where Meshi had been during the war. She looked to be Luap’s age, and perhaps, like many city people, she had simply stayed home and hoped the war would not disrupt her life.

“I had no choice,” Rahi said, feeling her face flush. She had assumed that everyone knew her story. “And now—”

“Raheli has no village to return to,” Luap said smoothly. “Surely you knew, Meshi. . . .”

“Oh.” Now it was Meshi’s turn to flush. “I’m sorry. I should have known . . . it’s just these dratted apples . . . all full of core and I wasn’t thinking—” Her hands twitched among the peels.

“It’s all right,” Rahi said. “I must get used to those who don’t know the whole story.”

Meshi turned to her. “As you had a parrion for it, would you want to help with these apples?”

“Of course.” Rahi moved to the table, and picked up an apple. “Sliced or just cored?”

“Sliced, not too thin.” Meshi put an earthenware bowl between them. “If old Gird’s feeling better by suppertime, he’ll have some of it.”

They worked companionably until all the apples were sliced. Rahi got up to sniff her brew, and Meshi continued with her apple dish. Luap had snatched a slice on his way out, and Meshi laughed at him. “That man! There’s not another in this place like him. Those two, Arya and Lia, they don’t like him for being half mageborn, say he puts on airs, but I don’t see that. He likes to eat, but what man doesn’t?”

“He’s been with my—with Gird a long time,” Rahi said, stirring the brew. It smelled about right; she found a cloth to wrap the hot pan, and a mug for Gird to drink from.

Meshi stopped short and looked at her. “It’s hard for me to believe, Gird being your father. Him so fair and balding, and you so dark—”

“My mother,” Rahi said. “She was dark.”

“Ah. And a parrion of cooking, like you? Surely it came from her family, for old Gird, bless him, can hardly boil water.”

Rahi laughed, surprising both of them. “I know. When my mother died, he had to cook—and I learned very quickly.”

“It’s none o’ my affair,” said Meshi in the tone always used by those who say it anyway, “but your Da needs a family. Why not come here to live? You’d be happier in your parrion than off somewhere being a Marshal.”

Rahi smiled at her, but shook her head. “I have to be a Marshal,” she said. “I don’t quite know why, but I know it’s right.” Then she took the brew upstairs, and woke Gird from a restless doze. When he asked her the same question, she was ready with the same answer . . . and he smiled at her and agreed.