But she would have to talk to Luap and Gird, bearing the grievances of some women and the fears of some men, worrying about prophecies and law instead of bread and meat. She sighed, finally, and pushed herself away from the table. Her bowl went into the washpot; she doused it and rinsed it and set it aside before Lia could intervene, and grinned at the surprised younger woman.
“My parrion was cooking and herblore,” she said. “In the old days.” Arya looked up at that.
“D’you still?”
“No—not much. I’ve five bartons and the grange to oversee, and the market courts as well.”
“Someday we won’t have parrions,” Lia said. “Someday we’ll be able to choose what we like.”
Rahi just managed not to stare rudely at her. “Parrions are what you like; I had my mother’s gift for it, and nothing made me happier than using it.”
“Not me,” Lia said. “I’d have learned leatherwork, if I could, but my uncle said girls must choose needlework, weaving, or cooking. And at that, he wouldn’t let me choose, but left it to my aunt.”
It must be the city way, Rahi thought. “A parrion is a talent,” she said firmly, “talent and learning both. If you’re not happy as a cook, why not learn leatherwork now?”
“It’s too late, and none of the leatherworkers would have me as prentice,” Lia said. She seemed to grow angrier as she talked about it, as if Rahi’s interest were fat dripping on hot embers.
“There’s a woman in my grange does that work,” Rahi said slowly. “She’s got a girl prentice.” She was realizing that even now she understood very little of the structure of city crafts; had city women been restricted in their parrions? Had the village girls? None of them, after all, were ever swineherd or tanner or—except in emergencies—drove the ploughteams. She had assumed those differences resulted from the magelords’ rules, but they didn’t really know all that much about their own ancestors. How much of what she saw now, in the villages and towns, was new, a still fragile structure?
Lia shrugged, the shrug of someone more ready to complain than change, if change requires effort. “It’s all right; I’m here and doing useful work. And with Arya.”
Another tangle. She wondered who would know how the crafts had been organized, which were traditionally men’s and which women’s. And how Gird could possibly come up with a law that would satisfy those who remembered the past and those who wanted a wholly new future.
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—”