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One of the trickiest challenges in writing nonhuman characters is portraying them as both alien and emotionally accessible to the reader. In “The Fountain’s Choice,” we saw a riyachiya through the eyes of another character. Here, British author Kari Sperring switches viewpoints to give us human characters, with all their strengths and vices, as seen by a riyachiya narrator. Immie’s simplicity and nonjudgmental loyalty illuminate the altogether human dilemmas of her world.
Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to discover that the company had been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian instead and as Kari Maund has written and published five books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history and co-authored a book on the history and real people behind her favorite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She’s been writing as long as she can remember and completed her first novel at the age of eight (twelve pages long and about ponies). She’s been a barmaid, a tax officer, a P.A. and a university lecturer, and has found that her fascinations, professional or hobby-level, feed and expand into her fiction. Living With Ghosts, her first novel, evolved from her love of France and its history, ghosts, mysteries, Celtic culture, strange magic, sharks, and sword-fights: The Grass King’s Concubine has even found a creative role for book-keeping. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner Phil (who helps design the sword-fights) and three very determined cats, who guarantee that everything she writes will have been thoroughly sat upon. She’s currently at work on her third and fourth novels at once, because she needs more complications in her life. She can be found at http://www.karisperring.com, on Facebook (Kari Sperring), Twitter (@karisperring) and on Live Journal as la_marquise_de_. She says she’s been reading and loving the Darkover series since she was thirteen and is delighted and honored to be allowed to write in this wonderful world.
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My house has fifteen widows. They are Chrysa, Elena, Janet, Kathia, Laurenna, Lilias, Mikhela, Mirella, Moira, Patryce, Priscilla, Robina, Tessa, Valli, and me. Not all of us were once married, but Lady Laurenna says we are all widows because of Dom Justin, even me, and that all of us are sisters, even though Priscilla is old and half-blind and Lilias has not come to her woman-time. Even me and Valli, though no one is allowed to marry us because we are not really people, not like the others. Lady Laurenna is Lord of our house, because we have no menfolk anymore and because she is leronis, even though Domna Priscilla is the oldest and a proper lady because of being married to Dom Martin who was Dom Justin’s grandfather and Patryce is the strongest and Mikhela has laran, too, although she was not Tower-trained and so does Lady Mirella, but she does not talk since the bad days happened and I made Dom Justin die.
I did not mean to make him die, only to make him stop hurting my Lady and her sisters, but I did it wrong and he died. Patryce said Good riddance but Lady Laurenna said it is like a proper person to care and that anyway she helped me kill him and she knew what she was doing, so it’s all right and not really my fault, because although Lord Justin was my lord, and hers too and lord of all the other women, none of us really liked him, and especially not Lady Mirella who was his wife di catenas.
I hope I have spelled that right. Mikhela taught me to read and write and she is very clever like her sister Lady Mirella, but I am not very good at writing yet, and I need a lot of practice. That is why I am writing this, and Lady Robina is helping me because she says it’s better than sewing and she says I have spelled it right. But I would rather do the sewing because I do not make mistakes at that and no one is upset with me, not even Tessa who does not like me. Lady Robina says sewing is stupid but I think we all need clothes to wear and Lilias and Lady Robina are still growing. And Lady Robina says if I think that, I can do the sewing and she will write this story, but she does not know all of it and I do. And Mikhela says that Lady Robina should be grateful she has sewing to do now she is a woman, because if Dom Justin was still alive she would have much less pleasant things to do, because Dom Justin would have made her get married to Lord Carsten or Lord Bruno or another of his hateful friends.
When Mikhela says that, Lady Robina gets angry and throws her sewing to the floor and runs out and slams the door and I make more spelling mistakes. But Mikhela says that does not matter because what is important is my story and she will help me write it.
Lady Laurenna told me to write this down, because it needs to be told and she thinks if I write it I won’t have my nightmares anymore.
My name is Immie, and I am a riyachiya. This is my story.
~o0o~
From the moment he could walk, Dom Justin Rossell knew he was born for greater things than the lordship of Forest Lodge. His grandfather, Dom Martin, might be satisfied with a few miles of dense woodland, rights over a minor river, and such income as could be derived from nuts and timber and hunting, but Justin wanted more. His father, Dom Martin’s son Marcus, was little better than Martin, as far as Justin could tell, but he had one virtue in his son’s eyes. He had married a nedestro daughter of the Moray-Aillard line and gotten Justin on her before his early death in a border skirmish. Domna Kathia, raised in a great lordship, wanted more than Forest Lodge for her son and, once he was old enough, arranged for him to be fostered in the castle of her brother, Dom Ranald-Istvan, the current Lord Moray-Aillard, alongside that lord’s own children. From the age of seven, Justin slept in a well-appointed tower room, wore fine-woven fabrics, and ate of the best the Aillard lands could offer. Gentle Dom Martin shook his head over his grandson’s love of finery, but could deny neither him nor Kathia anything. Each quarter, he laid aside more and more of his income for his grandson’s use and when threshold sickness came upon Justin when he was twelve, Dom Ranald-Istvan’s own leronis watched over him. The Rossell line had little in the way of laran—Marcus Rossell would never have gained Kathia had he not saved the lord in battle and had Kathia not been marked out by a strange light streak in her red-brown hair which set better marital prizes worrying over genetic disorders. But Marcus had just enough of the family Gift—a sense for incoming danger—to please his lord, and blended with the potential coded in Kathia’s genes, to give life to a son with powerful laran. When Justin was fourteen, the leronis declared she could teach him no more, and he was sent, again with his mother’s help, to study at El Haliene Tower, where another of her kin was a matrix worker. Aged eighteen, trained in war with mind and blade, Justin joined Dom Ranald-Istvan’s fighting band as warrior and laranzu. The leronis who had nursed him through his threshold sickness was old and her powers weakening. Before he was twenty, Justin had replaced her in Dom Ranald-Istvan’s council.
The next year, the old leronis died. At Justin’s suggestion, Dom Ranald-Istvan sent to El Haliene Tower for her replacement. “One leronis to care for your household and teach your family, and me to arm you for battle.” But El Haliene did not sent one leronis but two; Laurenna as teacher and healer and Carsten to assist Justin in the making of laran weapons. It was ten days’ long ride to El Haliene Tower and the old leronis had not had the skills or strength to make aircars to ease the journey, while Justin, engaged as he was with the lord’s wars, did not have the time. With Carsten and Laurenna, and the others who soon joined them, Dom Ranald-Istvan had his own Tower.
His own, or Justin’s. But Justin was loyal and all his efforts were bent to the lord’s service, until Dom Ranald-Istvan’s armouries were piled high and his armies ready. All through the summer of that year, the lord’s warriors ravaged the borders of the Valeron and the Isoldir and the di Asturias, burning homesteads and crops, seizing women and livestock and lands. In every skirmish, every battle, Justin rode in the van, his red hair uncovered and his sword bloodied in his hand. No enemy could lay a hand on him; his laran warned him of every attack. “He is blessed by Evanda,” the common soldiers said and gaped as he passed. But, “Zandru has his hand on him,” muttered the sergeant who looked after his tents, and the orderly who cooked for him and the women who warmed his bed. But Dom Ranald-Istvan loved him, and when, late in that same year, old Dom Marius died, Dom Ranald-Istvan bestowed Forest Lodge on Justin and with it new lands taken from the Isoldir, and a fine sword and a breeding pair of good horses on top.
When Justin was twenty-four, Dom Ranald-Istvan at last turned his armies north, against Ridenow of Ferrach Fada, who had been his family’s main rival through four generations. The late Lord Moray-Aillard—who was Justin’s grandfather via Kathia, as well as Dom Ranald-Istvan’s—had died in battle against Dom Pier Ridenow of Ferrach Fada. Dom Pier’s father had in turn been killed fighting against Ranald-Istvan’s grandfather and so back through the years. Dom Ranald-Istvan had nursed his need for revenge down fifteen bitter years. Now, with Justin’s laran weapons and gifts, he was ready to strike. The army marched as the last snow cleared, and before summer was out Dom Pier and his sons lay dead on the battlefield, his castle burned, and his womenfolk were in Dom Ranald-Istvan’s hands: his wife Elena, his legitimate daughter Mirella and his nedestra daughters Mikhela and Moira, and all the other women of the household, many of them high-born, and many gifted to greater or lesser extent with the Ridenow laran. Justin’s sword had cut down Dom Pier himself, while his bredu Lord Bruno slew Dom Pier’s eldest son; the bonedust and clingfire he brewed had eaten away at Dom Pier’s armies and devastated his villages.
At the victory feast, Justin sat at the lord’s left hand, lower only than the lord’s son, Lord Alan, while Dom Ranald-Istvan divided the spoils in land and wealth and women and cralmac servants. The lord showered him with gifts: new pastures to add to his woodlands, horses and weapons, ornaments for his mother and sister, fine furnishings and tapestries. But all through the feast, Justin had eyes only for the beautiful Mirella, standing in chains at the end of the hall, with her mother and sisters and waiting women. One by one, Dom Ranald-Istvan assigned the women to this vassal and that. Elena he granted to his own wife, Domna Annilda, to wait on her or scrub for her as she chose. He gave Moira and Mikhela to Alan, who at eighteen was ready to beget sons. One by one, the women were led away until only Mirella remained and, alone of all the lords and captains, only Justin had been granted no paramour. His face remained calm and his body relaxed, but under his skin, his pulse raced and his heart pounded.
Mirella stood alone, still dressed in the garments in which she had been captured, now torn and dirtied from the long journey. Her ornaments were gone, to adorn the wrists and fingers and throats of more fortunate women. Her hair was matted, pulled back from her face and tied with a rag torn from the hem of her dress. She did not weep or shake or beg, only stood as she was with the chains about her arms and stared back at Dom Ranald-Istvan, chin high and eyes fierce. Some of the women wept as they were led away, others cursed and spat and fought, but Mirella kept silent.
“You are very proud, mestra,” Dom Ranald-Istvan said. She made him no answer. “Your father is dead. Your brothers are dead. Your home lies in ruins. Your nearest kinsman is many leagues away and is doubtless already calculating the advantages he can garner from your father’s fall. My leronis Laurenna has bound your laran. No one will help you. No one will save you. You have no at all reason for your pride.”
“My honor remains,” Mirella said, and her voice was rich and low.
“Honor?” Dom Ranald-Istvan shook his head. “Honor is easily tarnished. And the honor of women...”
“My lord,” Mirella said, “as long as I remain true to myself, I keep my honor, whether that is in my father’s hall or your scullery. My condition does not matter.”
“Proud,” said Dom Ranald-Istvan, “and brave with it.”
“As you say, my lord.”
“You have the Ridenow Gift, do you not?”
“I do, my lord.”
“Will you use it in my service? There is room in my tower for another leronis.”
“You flatter me, my lord. I am neither strongly Gifted nor Tower trained.”
“And you do not wish to serve me.” But Dom Ranald-Istvan was not angry. “Your father had strong laran.” He gestured towards the clutch of servants bred in Dom Pier’s laboratories, and now corralled at the back of the hall. “Will you not share his secrets with me?”
“I will not, my lord, for I do not know them.”
There was a moment of stillness throughout the hall. On the dais, Justin held his breath. Then Dom Ranald-Istvan laughed. To the guard who accompanied Mirella, he said, “Release her,” and then, when the chains were unlocked, he held out a hand and said to her, “Come here.”
Mirella took time to rub her wrists and stretch her shoulders before she obeyed. Like some queen out of story, she walked the length of the hall, head high, and stood without curtseying before the lord. He studied her without speaking for some time. Then he smiled. “Brave and proud. You are mine, mestra, from this day.” He turned to Domna Annilda, “She needs a bath and new clothing. Send some of your women to see to it.” Annilda flushed and nodded. At his side, Justin let out his breath in a soft hiss.
Women came and led Mirella from the hall. At last, Dom Ranald-Istvan turned to Justin. “I have another gift for you, too, straight from Dom Pier’s own bedchamber. A gift more unusual and more pleasant than any other. And more biddable, too, I’ll warrant, than any of his women. I’d thought to keep them for myself, but... You have earned them, and more.” And he gestured to the guards who watched the collection of created servants, and two of them led forth my sister Valli and me.
I am Immie. We are riyachiyas.
~o0o~
“What I want to know,” says Lilias, “is why they just stood there and let those men give them away. I wouldn’t let that happen. I’d bite them and kick them till they let go of me, and then I’d run away.” She stops to think about that, and adds, “or I’d hit them with an axe, like Patryce.”
“You couldn’t pick up an axe,” says Lady Robina. “You couldn’t even pick up Janet’s kitchen chopper. You’re not big enough.”
“If I was Immie or Domna Mirella I would be,” Lilias says, sticking out her tongue. “I’d chop and chop until I was free and they couldn’t stop me.”
“They could if they had swords,” says Robina, “and bonedust and clingfire and bows and...”
“And you two have neither, and these shirts won’t mend themselves,” says Patryce, throwing a look at Mikhela, who sits by the window. “Or perhaps you’d rather help Janet in the kitchen or Chrysa looking after Domna Priscilla? They can always use help.”
“I like helping Janet,” says Lilias, and drops her sewing on the floor.
Robina turns back to her work and sets more stitches. But after a while, she looks at me, and says, “Why didn’t you run away, Immie?”
I don’t really understand her question. I belonged to Dom Pier, then Dom Ranald-Istvan, then Lord Justin. They were not dogs that tried to bite me; why would I run away? I think about it, then I say, “They didn’t tell me to, my lady.”
Robina giggles. Mikhela turns round and says, “It wasn’t that easy, chiya. Dom Ranald-Istvan had soldiers who watched us and laranzu’in, and his castle had high walls and locked doors and we didn’t have the keys.”
“You could have run away when they were bringing you there,” Robina says, and Mikhela sighs. Robina did not see the fall of Dom Pier’s castle. She was not there later, either, when Lord Justin rebelled, though afterwards....
But I have not got to that part of that story. Lady Laurenna says it’s important that I tell it in the right order.
Lilias sneaks a glance at me and I pretend to be busy with my writing. She says, “My brother hit Immie. He hit Valli, too, and burned her face. I would have run away if he did that to me. I would have hit him back.”
Human women are afraid to be hit. I have seen that. When Lord Justin struck Lady Mirella, at first she held her head up and hit him back. But he did not stop hitting her. And after a while she didn’t fight him anymore or shout at him. She just cried. Valli and I are not afraid if a man hits us. We like it. It pleased Dom Pier that we should and so he built us that way. I look up from my writing, and I say, “Valli and I didn’t mind.”
“But you should,” Lilias says. “I don’t like it when Mommy scolds me, or Chrysa or Patryce. I cry. Justin was a bad person. He shouted at me. He hit Mirella. He nearly hit me when I said I didn’t want to marry Lord Bruno.” Her lip wobbled. “He hit Mirella and now she won’t talk to anyone.”
Mikhela rises and takes the child in her arms. “She’ll get better, chiya.”
I don’t know if that is true. Lady Laurenna looks anxious when she talks about Lady Mirella. Domna Elena sometimes cries. Valli cries, too. Lady Mirella was kind to us. When her father beat us, back in his castle, she sent her tiring woman with salves for bruises and smiled at us when she passed us by. Domna Elena pretended she did not see us, though once when Dom Pier was not there, she spat at us. Later on, when we belonged to Justin, and he beat us—he hit harder than Dom Pier ever did—Lady Mirella sometimes came to us herself. When Valli dropped his wine cup and Justin pushed her face into the fire, Lady Mirella brought us salves for the burn. Justin was angry, but he had to pretend, because then she was still Dom Ranald-Istvan’s.
I don’t think she liked Justin, not even then.
~o0o~
Mirella was lying about the extent of her laran. That was clear to Justin from her first days in Dom Ranald-Istvan’s stronghold. To the Dom and his household, she was all grace and politeness, but under it, she hated them all. Justin was sure of that; in her place, he would have, and she was only a woman, and thus weaker and more prone to wasting her energies in emotion. Had she been his, he’d have broken her of it soon enough, but the Dom was soft-hearted and indulged her. She was his war-prize and the daughter of his enemy, whose bones lay bleaching under the red sun, but he treated her like a favoured pet. Within a month, she had the run of the castle, though Justin, as laranzu and adviser, counselled him otherwise. He watched her with eyes that were hot and greedy. Laurenna also had Ridenow blood, though several generations back.
“You’re much of an age, and a stranger here, too. Get close to her, find out what she’s hiding. She could yet be a danger to our lord,” Justin said, and set Laurenna to watch her. He instructed Bruno to try and flirt with her, persuaded Carsten to engage her in conversation about her father’s experiments. And over and over, he sought to rouse the suspicions of the Dom.
Perhaps he told himself, at first, that he did this for the safety of the domain. Perhaps he even believed it for a while. But he had wanted Mirella and been refused, he had seen others honoured over him (or so he thought) and in his heart, his resentment festered.
He had served Dom Ranald-Istvan loyally since he was old enough to fight, and his lord—his kinsman—had betrayed him. His skills had brewed the clingfire and created the strategy that brought down Ferrach Fada; his sword had cut down Dom Pier. He was Dom Ranald-Istvan’s nephew, albeit by a nedestra sister. He had twice the talent and intelligence of Dom Ranald-Istvan’s heir, Lord Alan, who preferred the rryl to the sword, and the company of his two new concubines to the hunt, and whose laran was negligible. Justin watched Mirella and he watched the Dom and his ambition grew.
He had been raised to be a lord, after all. Why should he not be lord over a greater domain than just Forest Lodge? As summer turned to fall and fall to winter, and the lord dismissed the bulk of his army for the duration, Justin drew his friends and allies close and together they planned.
“I should not have listened,” Lady Laurenna says sometimes, her brow furrowed. But Justin was her colleague and her Tower mentor and, with her Ridenow blood, thin though it was, she was not well-liked by many of Dom Ranald-Istvan’s people. In the tower, Justin and his fellow laranzu’in worked over new weapons, and spoke to the Dom of his plans.
The first signs of the fever appeared in early winter. It seemed at first to be nothing of consequence: a stable-boy came down with it and recovered, then a girl from the laundry, and the son of the steward. The first death was Cloris, Lady Annilda’s sewing woman, who was old and infirm already. Two days later, a groom died. Then two of the kitchen staff and the valet who served Lord Alan. Within a week, half the castle was sick and all the laranzu’in were kept busy brewing nostrums, whether they were healer-skilled or not. After the seventh death, servants and soldiers began to disappear, slipping away by night. Lord Carsten came down with the sickness and hovered for two days between life and death. Dom Ranald-Istvan raged and issued commands, but with the guards reduced by illness and the winter, they were hard to fulfil. And by then, the Dom himself had begun to shiver. Domna Annilda lay sick in her bed, as did Lord Alan and one of his two concubines. Mirella herself was observed to cough and grow pale, though she refused to take to her bed, insisting instead on helping to nurse the sick. Domna Annilda died on the tenth day. At the end of the second week, Lord Alan died and little Lilias was taken delirious to her bed. Dom Ranald-Istvan—a shaking, sweating ghost of himself—sent for Justin and the steward.
When the Dom died, two days later, Justin was proclaimed his successor. A week later, the sickness burned itself out. The master-at-arms was the last to die, another aging man. “Everyone who might threaten or question Justin,” said Mikhela, much, much later. “The Dom and his family, apart from Lilias. The steward. The senior captains. And just enough of the servants that it didn’t seem too obvious.”
“Yes,” said Laurenna. And then, “He should have killed me, too. But he didn’t realise, not then, and neither did I.” She would not say, not then, not ever, how exactly Justin had done it, though I know it was to do with the sickness.
For two months before the sickness came, Lord Justin made me drink a bitter potion every night. But I never got sick. Neither did Valli. We are riyachiyas, we are not made like humans. He made his groom take it, too, and he was the second man who died. Once I saw Lord Carsten drink it, and two days later he took sick, but Justin dosed him with another potion, the same one he gave to Lilias and Mirella and those he liked or wanted. He had a different medicine for everyone else. Sometimes, he gave the potions to me to carry or to feed to his patients, and I could smell that they were different.
Everything was different, then. Lord Justin sent to Forest Lodge for his mother and sister to come and live at the castle. He made Domna Elena serve them. He gave Mikhela and Moira to Lord Bruno. He promised Lilias to Lord Bruno, too, as soon as she was old enough, and she screamed and cried and tried to bite him. Moira cried, too. She had grown to like Lord Alan. Justin made Carsten his laranzu and Keeper of the Tower, and promised him Robina in marriage when she came of age.
Mirella he kept for himself, locking the copper bracelets about her wrists in the great hall before all that remained of the household.
~o0o~
Perhaps Justin—Dom Justin now—tried to be a good lord. I don’t know how lords are meant to be with other men or with people outside their household. He pleased us, Valli and me, well enough, though sometimes he made the human women who served him cry. He made Mirella cry, often and often. We cried, too, but only when he wished us to. He did not make the men who served him cry, but as days became weeks and weeks became months, more and more of them frowned when he gave them orders. Dom Ranald-Istvan had eight men who sat on his council, as well as his laranzu, and sewing room gossip claimed Domna Annilda had influence over him too. Justin listened to no one but himself, not even Carsten or Bruno. Sated with women and hunting, Bruno did not care, but Carsten grew silent and spent ever more hours in the Tower at his studies.
I do not know who first suggested to Justin that Carsten plotted against him. Perhaps no one needed to. Perhaps the suspicion grew all by itself. If one laranzu might overthrow his lord, why not another? I do not know who suggested to him that Carsten had an eye to Mirella. From the day he took over the domain, Justin had put an end to her freedom of the castle, restricting her to the solar and the sewing room and her own quarters. “It is not appropriate for a woman of the Comyn to be befriending servants and wandering about where any petty guardsman might see her.” At first, he permitted her to continue with the work she did among the sick and elderly, though he deprived her of Patryce, who had been her tiring woman since she came to the castle, and set Laurenna to watch her. To watch and to report on each and every use Mirella made of her laran. He instructed Valli to wait on her, to draw her bath and help her dress and sleep in her chamber on nights when he was elsewhere.
I was lonely without Valli, and Lord Justin only came to me now when Mirella had her courses or she made him angry. When she made him angry, he beat me until my blood ran, and forbade her to tend me. “Immie is not a person, she’s a thing. You don’t waste your energy healing the furniture.”
“You mend your armour if it is damaged. You take care of your weapons,” Mirella said.
“Weapons can be replaced,” Justin said. “And I will not have you spending time with servants and animals.”
The truth was, he was jealous of everything and everyone she spent time with. He burnt any book he found her reading. When she showed affection towards one of his hounds, he slit the animal’s throat in front of her.
“The animal is innocent,” Mirella said. “Why punish it, in place of me?”
That was the first time he struck her in the presence of others. In private... Valli whispered to me of beatings and blows.
It seems to be the way of men, to hit those they love, though Chrysa, whose husband had been Dom Ranald-Istvan’s steward, says her man was kind, and Moira swears Lord Alan never raised a hand to her or Mikhela. Even Patryce, who does not like men at all, says some of them are kind.
I was wrong when I said I do not know who first told Dom Justin that Mirella had an eye to Lord Carsten and him to her. It was Lady Laurenna.
~o0o~
“You were jealous,” Domna Kathia says. “You wanted my son for yourself. You wanted to be the only significant leronis in his household. You wanted to have power for yourself.”
“Power?” Laurenna says. “Who does not want that? You do. You had it at Forest Gate. You had it at the castle. Your son made you first lady of his household. You had it over Elena. Yes, I wanted power—power over my own life. But I did not want your son.”
Kathia laughs, and her voice is harsh. “You expected him to marry you when you came from El Haliene, and he never gave you a look. As if he’d wed a girl who knew her mother’s name but not her father’s, other than he was some soldier of the Ridenow. I saw how you were with him, in the days of Dom Ranald-Istvan. With him and with Carsten, too.”
Laurenna shakes her head. “Tower ways are not those of the domains. I do not deny that he and I were lovers, betimes. But there needs to be no more than brief desire for that. I would not wish your son as husband on any woman.” Her eye falls on me. “Or any near-woman, either.”
Domna Kathia spits. She does not like me or Valli, any better than she likes Laurenna, or Mikhela or Patryce. I sometimes think she does not like any of us, apart from Robina.
She has to like Robina. Robina is her daughter. When we came here, when we fled the castle, it was Robina who made the steward let us in. We could not trust Kathia, then. Patryce says we should have killed her, but Laurenna would not let her. “There has been enough killing,” she said, “and Justin was her son.”
“Then leave her for the high lord’s soldiers, when they come. For Dom Ranald-Istvan’s cousins.”
“Justin was her son,” Laurenna repeated. “Justin slew Dom Ranald-Istvan. Do you think his kin will let her live?”
Laurenna saved Domna Kathia’s life, but Domna Kathia is not grateful. “Nor should she be,” Laurenna says. “We keep her captive in her own home. That is no cause for gratitude.”
~o0o~
“Carsten is a better teacher than me,” Laurenna said. “I’m impatient, you know that. And Mirella is old to begin Tower training.”
“You have Ridenow blood,” said Lord Justin. “You understand that gift. And she has far stronger laran than she admits. I can feel it.” He took another gulp of wine from his copper cup. “She’s mine. She ought to be of use to me. Instead... Sometimes I feel danger around her. Danger from her.”
“She has no weapons,” Laurenna said. “And your laran is strong. How can she harm you? You jump at shadows.”
It was spring. Word had spread of the change of lordship. To the east, the neighboring lords muttered. A new lord took time to gain the loyalty of his vassals. And in that time, an ambitious neighbor might gain. News trickled in of a raid here, a vassal seeking patronage from another lord there. Justin grew twitchier with every passing day. He said, now, “If I could harness her gift... Her father sought to make only servants and toys, but I could breed soldiers who would seek only to serve and to please their master.”
“Then have Carsten teach her.” Laurenna hesitated. “He... I would be there, of course, as chaperone. She likes him. And he is gentle with his students. Of course, it would be even better if you taught her yourself, but you are needed elsewhere. And,” and she hesitated, “I fear she finds it hard to forget that her father died at your hand. Let Carsten soften her for you, and then... Her Gift will be at your disposal.”
“It should be already,” Justin grumbled.
“Perhaps,” Laurenna said, “that is the danger you sense, her lack of training. Of course, I am happy to work with her, if you wish. But Carsten has the experience, and he’s stronger than me.” She rose. “Think it over. I know Carsten is willing. He was praising her potential only yesterday.”
Two days later, Justin sent Mirella to the Tower, with Laurenna to help her and Valli to wait on her, and Janet, too, whom he pulled from her kitchen duties. “You will study and you will work, and you will do as I wish,” he said, putting a hand to her jaw to make her look at him. “My enemies gather and I need more weapons. Do you understand?”
“I do, my lord.” And so Mirella went to the Tower, and Justin had to do without her for a season. He took me back to his bed, and others, too, including Mikhela, who had a look of her. He seemed not to recall he had granted her to Lord Bruno. Men are careless of such things, I think, or at least lords are. They are born to rule, and those under them are there to serve. His mother Domna Kathia, who ran his household, did not mind about me, nor about Tessa, who worked in the stillroom and had been married to a guard who died of the sickness. He tried to take Patryce, and she clawed and bit him and then locked herself in his privy, and he had her flogged. Domna Kathia watched and afterwards scolded Patryce for her waywardness. She did not even mind when, drunk, he dragged Domna Elena to his bed. But she frowned over Mikhela.
Lord Bruno frowned, too. And when, in late spring, Dom Justin sent him as envoy to Lord Aillard of Aillard, who called himself King and was a distant cousin to Dom Ranald-Istvan, he did not come back.
Bandits, said Dom Justin, weeping for his bredu, and sent his swiftest messenger to complain to the King. “Assassins,” said kitchen gossip, “and not the king’s, neither.” Assassins in the pay of a man who could not stand to be questioned or checked. Dom Justin drank more in those days, and grew ever more suspicious of those about him. “The drink clouds your laran,” said Laurenna, but he sneered at her and sent her away.
When his sister Robina, who had gone through threshold sickness the year before and showed signs of the Rossell Gift, asked if she too might study with Carsten, he snarled at her that she sought to rival him, and locked her in her room for a week. And when Domna Kathia protested on his daughter’s behalf, he struck her also.
I think that was when the women started talking. At least, that was when Laurenna took to coming to the sewing room. “I need a respite from my Tower work,” she said. “And stitching is so restful.” They met in twos and threes, over the mending and the cooking, in the schoolroom, where Elena sought to make Robina and Lilias attend to their lessons, in their bedchambers and in the halls. Elena and Patryce, Mikhela and Tessa, Janet and Chrysa, Moira and Laurenna. They smiled and laughed, exchanged compliments and embroidery stitches. There was nothing to see, except...
“They whisper,” whispered Valli to me, late one night when she had sneaked away from the Tower and Dom Justin pleasured himself with Mikhela. “They use words I don’t understand.” She snuggled closer, under the blanket. “Lady Mirella is happy in the tower. Lord Carsten is nice to her. So is Lady Laurenna. Lady Laurenna says...” and she took my hand, “she says Dom Justin was wrong to burn me, because I’m a person, like her. She says he’s a bad man and wants more wars. Lady Laurenna told him that Lady Mirella was learning well and was happy, and he hit her.”
It was true about the wars. For a turn of the seasons, Justin was content with Dom Ranald-Istvan’s holdings. But as fall came round again, his ambitions grew. “I’m as much an Aillard as any of them, through my mother,” he told me one night. “I’m young and strong, and the king is aging. Why should I not be King?”
“I don’t know, my lord,” I said, and he laughed.
“How could you, you stupid creature? Would you like me to be King?”
“Oh, yes, my lord, if it pleased you.”
“And Lady Mirella, do you think she would like it?”
“Why not, my lord, if you were happy?”
His smile died. “What makes you say that, thing? She would rather die than see me happy.”
I dropped to my knees before him, “Then she is wrong, my lord. I think you would make a very fine King.”
“So do I, yet I am troubled, troubled...”
The next day, he went to the tower, to command Carsten to increase the production of clingfire. He found his friend alone with Mirella, both bent over some book, and laughing.
We all heard the screaming.
When he came back, he was covered in blood. Mirella lay in his arms, unconscious and bleeding. And, in the tower, Carsten lay dead.
~o0o~
Mirella was once again confined to her bedchamber and no one was allowed to tend her, apart from Valli. “The rest of you are against me,” he yelled, when first Laurenna, then Kathia, remonstrated with him.
“She needs a healer, caryo.”
“She has laran of her own. Let her heal herself.”
“At least let the riyachiya take her a pain-killing draught.”
“She is my enemy! Don’t you see that? She won’t use her Gift to make my armies. She plotted with Carsten against me. And you are all in it, too, I sense it. You hate me! You all hate me.”
“I am your mother, and I love you.”
But Justin would not listen, retreating to his rooms. In the sewing room, the women gathered, me amongst them for once. “Well, if his high lordship is sulking, he’s not watching,” said Patryce. “I’m going to my lady, and no one will stop me.”
“Dom Justin has the key to her chamber,” Moira said.
“Then I’ll break the lock.”
“Wait,” said Laurenna. She looked at me. “Immie, sweet, I have left my blue veil in my chamber. Could you fetch it for me, please? It should be in the small chest.”
“Of course, damisela.” Dom Justin had not summoned me, nor had he forbidden me to wait on Lady Laurenna.
“And when you find it, could you come back via the kitchens and ask Janet to bring up bread and hot wine?”
“Z’par servu, vai leronis.” I curtseyed and obeyed. It took me some time to find the veil, for it was not where Laurenna said, and then Janet was busy and did not want to hear me. When I returned, Laurenna smiled and thanked me, and sent me to bed.
If there had been whispering in the castle before, now it redoubled. Without Carsten the Tower—small enough already—was too small to make weapons efficiently, even if Dom Justin worked in it himself. The remaining guards—and they were few, in those last days—muttered amongst themselves, and one night a third of them slipped away. The servants were afraid. “The Dom is crazy,” one said to me. “He’s drunk half the time and he talks to himself. I’ve heard him. He’ll kill us all in our beds, like poor Lord Carsten. And poor Lady Mirella!”
“They hate me,” said Dom Justin. It seemed to amuse him. “They hate me and fear me. I can live with that.” He spent his days in the Tower, from which he had banned everyone, including Laurenna, and his nights with me. “They all hate me but you, chiya. But you love me, don’t you.”
“Yes, my lord.” It was my function to love.
It was three nights after that that Lady Laurenna gave me the wine, as I made my way to Dom Justin’s chamber.
He drank deep, and held out his cup for more. I rose to fetch the bottle to refill it. Behind me, he began to choke. I reached for him, but my hands did not know how to heal. I had not been taught how to keep a man from death.
Outside the chamber, I could hear running feet and the cries of men.
~o0o~
“I sneaked down to the stables,” Robina says, “and let the horses and chervines out, so the guardsmen couldn’t send a message for help. And I helped Lady Laurenna weave her illusion, too. “
“You did,” Laurenna said.
“Janet put sleeping stuff in the servants’ food,” says Lilias. “She let me stir it. And my mother stole Domna Kathia’s keys. She and Chrysa locked the guard in their quarters and barricaded the door.”
“The sergeant tried to get to Dom Justin, and Patryce killed him with her axe. Mikhela and Moira took drugged food to the sentries. And then we all ran away to Forest Lodge. We were heroines, like in the old stories.”
“Immie killed the Dom. She was bravest of all.” Lilias said.
“I didn’t mean to,” I say. My hand shakes, and I make a blot on my page. “I didn’t know. It wasn’t right. I didn’t mean to do it. Dom Justin was my master.”
Laurenna comes and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know,” she says. “That was why it had to be you. He’d have sensed the danger, from anyone else. But you... You were loyal.”
