Aris sat up straight. “Like Gird?” He thought about it. They saw her only when she came to Fin Panir, and often enough only from a distance. They had heard stories, of course, but none of them made her seem much like her father.
“I know, it surprised me, too. All we’d seen, after all, was her from a distance, walking around. That great scar on her face, and her dark hair—she doesn’t look anything like him. But when she looked at me, it gave me the same sort of feeling as the first time we met Gird. I don’t know how to say it better than that she’s an opposite of Luap.”
“Warm, not cold,” Aris mused, and looked up to see if Seri agreed. She was nodding vigorously.
“She has Gird’s directness. I liked her at once, but if she was my Marshal I wouldn’t dare try anything.” She didn’t have to elaborate on that; he knew about the tricks she’d played on her Marshal. It had been, she’d explained from time to time, the result of being separated from Aris. He had always kept her out of mischief. Not long after, they’d been reassigned to the same grange.
Now Aris came back to the main subject. “So Rahi stood up, and they were quiet, and then what?”
“She said it was a good plan. She said it should be in Fin Panir, and each grange should have the right to nominate two candidates a year, but not all would become Marshals.”
“But you thought three—”
“Two, three, it doesn’t matter. The point is, she approved. And—what you won’t believe—the Rosemage stood after her, and approved as well. She argued for including the study of law and the archives as well. Said that knowledge of war was only part of a Marshal’s training; that Marshals had to be able to act as judicars and recognize all kinds of things going wrong. The two of them started in, then, and it was almost as if they’d pulled the details of the plan straight out of my head.” She threw her arms out, raising a cloud of dust from the straw, and sneezed. “Of course, I know they didn’t, but it means we were planning in the right way.”
“Huh. If you said something that got the Rosemage and Gird’s daughter working together, it was definitely right.”
“They should be friends,” said Seri soberly. “They would fit together.”
“Luap doesn’t think so.”
Seri wrinkled her nose. “Luap couldn’t do what he does if they did, is what he means. But it’s what Gird would have wanted. Think of it—the Rosemage could lead her people—”
“Not while Luap is the king’s son, and she’s an outlander.”
“He could let her; he could tell them to follow her, and not him. But he won’t.” Seri rolled over on her stomach and propped her chin on her fists, as if she were a child again. “He’s ruining things.”
“He’s not!” Aris scrambled nearer and thumped her shoulder, then bent down to look her in the eye. “He’s Gird’s chosen luap, Seri: he is not ruining things.”
She didn’t budge. “You don’t see everything; you’re thick as bone some ways. I think the healing makes you see people differently. You don’t see what they are; you see their needs.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose for a moment before going on. “I don’t think he knows it, I’ll say that for him. I think he believes he’s doing the right thing, what Gird would have wanted. But he got it into his head a long time ago that the Rosemage and Rahi were natural enemies, like a levet and a wren—”
Aris snorted. “And which of those two is a wren?” Seri smacked him.
“You know what I mean. He thinks that, and he can’t see that they’re made to be allies. Not friends, maybe, but allies. And so he treats them as enemies, and they see each other through his vision, except sometimes like this.”
“Mmm.” It was something to think about. Did the healing magery give him such a different view of people? Or was it the magery itself? Could that be why Luap saw the Rosemage and Rahi as natural enemies? But he had no chance to discuss that with Seri, for someone was calling her. She rolled to her feet; he sighed and scrambled up after her. They had little time together these days, and he treasured the brief encounters.
“Seri!” Now the voice was closer: Rahi, Gird’s daughter. Aris followed Seri out of the stall. The older woman laughed, the first relaxed laugh he had ever heard from her. “I might have known you’d be off somewhere with Aris.”
“Yes, Marshal,” said Seri. Her braid had come half undone again, and she had straw in her springy curls.
“Did you come up with all that by yourself, or did Aris help?” Now that she was close, Aris realized what Seri had meant about her being like Gird. A bluntness, but without any brutality, a sense of great strength in reserve, a warmth . . . he found himself grinning back at her, more at ease than he usually was with the older Marshals.
“He did—”
“No, Marshal, it was all hers—” Aris broke off as his voice clashed with Seri’s and they laughed. “She will give me credit I don’t deserve: we talked about it, but that’s all.”
“Gird said you two were great friends—but he sent you to separate granges for training, didn’t he?”
“Yes, Marshal, but that doesn’t matter.” Seri might have said more, but another voice hailed them; the Rosemage moved across the stable yard, Aris thought, like one of the graceful horses.
“There you are, Rahi—and with the younglings. They’re a pair, aren’t they?” Aris felt like a colt up for sale at the market when the Rosemage shook her head at them. “Hard to believe the two of you could be our children, when you come to Council with solutions for problems the other Marshals haven’t thought of yet.”
Rahi had flushed, but now seemed relaxed and cheerful; Aris wondered what had upset her momentarily. He wanted to look at her scar; he wondered if he could heal it, but he dared not ask. “Fair enough.” Rahi said slowly. “One for each of us, that way.”
The Rosemage shook her head. “They come as a pair . . . we’ve learned that in Fin Panir, if nothing else. Gird himself separated them for a few years, in training, but even he admitted they were the closest he had seen outside a few twins.”
Rahi grinned; Aris noticed how the scar pulled at her mouth, making the grin uneven. “They don’t look much like twins,” she said.
“We’re not,” Seri said boldly. “We’re not alike, but we fit together. Father Gird said that was stronger than two alike.”
The two older women looked at each other, a measuring look, brows raised. “That’s true enough,” murmured the Rosemage. “But again uncanny wisdom for one so young.”
Seri shrugged, with a side glance at Aris. “It’s not my wisdom, but Gird’s.”
“Well, yours or Gird’s, it’s true enough. Now I—we—need to talk to you.” The Rosemage looked at Rahi. “Don’t we? It’s a nice afternoon for a walk in the meadow out near Gird’s grave.”
“And no one will overhear or interrupt,” said Rahi, smiling. “Of course we need to talk to these two. I hardly know them except by what I hear from Luap,”
With the older women flanking them, Aris and Seri walked out the west of the stable complex into the meadows beyond. Once well out of earshot of the stables, Rahi said, “You didn’t say all you had planned, Seri; I could tell that. What else?”
“Cob said it well enough,” Seri said. “The details don’t matter—I mean, they do, but it doesn’t matter who does it right, only that it’s done. I know I’m too young to be telling Marshals anything, let alone the Council.”
“But you were right,” said the Rosemage. “That’s what matters, not age.”