“And he has not taken the field at all?”
“No, although some of the local bartons sent volunteers. You did know that father allowed the bartons to organize openly?”
“Oh, yes.” Gird’s deep voice broke into a chuckle. “That news reached us quickly, I suspect.” It was not quite the reaction the Kirgan had expected; Luap recognized the flicker of eyelid, the tension of shoulder quickly controlled. “Luap—”
Luap recalled himself and said, “Yes, Gird?”
“The Kirgan Marrakai confirms our reports that Tsaia’s new king has no powers of magery, and that the merchants and craft guilds support his rule, while our supporters have mostly returned to their homes. I see no purpose in pursuing the war, with the most dangerous magelords dead—”
“Except the Duke Verrakai, Marshal-General,” murmured the Kirgan.
Gird’s shoulders lifted. “Far to your eastern border, Kirgan, and well beyond my reach. Those of you who know him best must do as you think wise, but you are not asking my aid, are you?”
“Well—no.” He had the look of one who would have taken help if it had been offered, and had been hoping for that offer.
“Then I see no cause for quarrel between your land and this. Is that not what your father meant by sending you?”
“Well . . . yes. To ask, rather, if it satisfied you.”
Gird heaved the kind of sigh that Luap had learned was intentionally dramatic. “Lad, I would be happiest if all the kingdoms lived in peace and plenty, but that’s not like to come in my lifetime. Men delight in quarrels, as cows in summer grass. But your father’s gold bought our freedom, in those steel points we used to let the mageborn blood run out—” Luap could not see the slightest flush, any sign that the youth considered mageborn blood his kin. Gird had told him the Marrakaien magery had been lost long before. How long? Long enough to consider themselves peasants? Not likely, with that air of mastery, that rich embroidery on sleeve and hem, those supple boots, that elaborately tooled belt. Was their friendship then pretense? What other motive could the Kirgan Marrakai have, coming to Gird, than that which he spoke openly?
He felt uneasy, all along his side, as he walked the Kirgan to the common dining hall. Gird had said, with a look that might have been meaningful (but which meaning?) to take care of him.
“He’s not changed.” The Kirgan sounded happy about that. Luap eyed him.
“Did you expect him to?”
“No. I suppose not. But my father told me that men in power often do.” A pause, in which they entered the dining hall, and Luap’s look quelled those who would have challenged the Kirgan. He showed the young man where to wash, and led him to the serving table. Would he expect fancier food? No—he dipped into the mutton stew as if he liked it, tore off a hunk of bread just as Luap did, and sat on the bench as if his rump were used to no better. “I saw that myself, in the new king we have.”
“Ah.” The new Tsaian king, which Duke Marrakai had backed against other contenders. “You are at court much?”
“Only to carry my father’s messages. He says court life is not healthy for young men—or for him, at present.” The Kirgan chuckled as he said that, and Luap smiled responsively. He could not decide if the young man’s frankness were what it seemed or not. He wished the Rosemage were there; she had known Duke Marrakai when he was young, though she would not talk much about him.
“So—has your new king changed?”
The Kirgan looked thoughtful and clasped his fingers as if that would help him decide what to say. “He was . . . they had always made fun of him. I heard that in the years I was in Valchai’s household. The king—the old one, I mean—had the mage powers our family had long lost, and some said that his cousin’s lack proved his bastard blood.”
A white rage shook Luap as a dog shakes a rag, then dropped him, leaving him hot and cold at once. He could feel his power struggling to escape, prove itself, but held it in check. He would not let this—this boy push him into anything rash. “Are the gifts then proof of pure blood?” he asked, as calmly as if discussing the color of a new calf.
“No. At least my father says not. Once perhaps they were, but when our folk came into the north, they began to fail, unaccountably and unpredictably. Some families accepted this as the gods’ price for the gift of a great new land, and others fought it . . . but that you know.”
“Yes.” It was all he could say, through clenched teeth; luckily, the Kirgan seemed not to notice.
“At any rate, the new king had been considered of no moment so many years that some thought he would be unable to rule. He was known to spend his days in the stables, training his own horses and even grooming them.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Gird asked, setting his own bowl down on the table and grunting as he swung his leg over the bench. Luap bit his lip. Even now, he’d find Gird down in the cowbyres of a morning, humming over some cow as he brushed her. For himself, if he never saw a cow except on the table, ready to eat, it would be well enough. The Kirgan flushed, and Gird relented. “I know: your great lords aren’t supposed to do their own work. But if the man likes horses, how can he keep away? Still, he’ll be busy enough now to have no time for that, as I have no time for farming. . . .”
“Would you go back to it?” No one else had asked, that Luap knew; trust a rash youth to open his mouth and say it.
Gird sighed. “Now? I—I like to think I would, if the chance came. I miss it, the smell of the grass and the cows, the feel of a scythe handle as the blade bites into the stems. But my farm’s gone, my family’s gone—and that’s all part of it, you see. Not just any field, but the field I knew from boyhood, and the same cottage, and my family around the table. Friends beside me in the field, all that. If I went back to farming, took a vacant place, I’d have to do it all alone. That I don’t want: their faces would hover over the table, and I—I’d be alone.”
For a moment, Luap saw Gird in some cottage, surrounded by children and grandchildren—but it would not happen, and they all knew it. He suspected that Gird would make a less than perfect grandfather anyway.
The Kirgan said, “I have thought long on what you told me before, sir. I have been learning the skills of farming myself.” He opened his hand to show Gird the calluses on his palm as if they were battle scars. Perhaps they were, Luap thought. Gird clearly approved, and his nod seemed to mean as much to the boy as any praise. What kind of duke would he make, with the attitudes he learned from Gird? As difficult as the blend of mageborn and peasant in Fintha. Luap could not imagine how it would work in Tsaia, with the mageborn retaining their right to rule. His envy ebbed, thinking on the difficult task the Kirgan would face as time went on.
When Arranha invited him to one of the courtyard discussions, Luap went hoping to hear something which would help him deal with his own confusion. Instead, Arranha spent the whole afternoon propounding the idea that common daylight and inspiration were analogous: that the gods gave light to see with eye and mind both, that the mere exposure of evil by such light somehow ensured its defeat, that all good men would naturally choose to be flooded with that light, so that any errors could be seen and corrected.
Luap could not explain what bothered him about that doctrine. Gird, somewhat impatient after a day spent settling quarrels between granges, had no sympathy with his imprecision.
“He’s a priest, and a Sunlord priest at that. Why should you understand what he says?”
“He thinks we all should.” Luap rolled the quill in his hand. “He thinks we should all understand the gods . . . that the Sunlord’s light enlightens everyone. . . .”