“But you can’t do it all yourself.” Binis looked tired, but less sulky than the days before. Perhaps work agreed with her; Gird had always said it was good for the sulks.
“No,” Cob agreed, wiping his bowl with a slice of bread. “No, I can’t do it all, not even with young Vre, here. But that’s what I tell them on drill nights—just as in an army, we’re all parts of each other. If you let your neighbor go hungry, he’s not likely to help you when the robbers come. Same way, if you’re always asking for help, but don’t give any, soon no one cares. I went after Hrelis today, you saw—the drunk. His wife’s always coming for grange-gift, says he’s sick. We know what kind of sick; Vre told me last night he was in here drinking and begging. So for him I have a bucket of cold water, but poor Jos, who got his arm broken helping someone reset a wheel, we’ll do what we can for him. When his arm’s mended, he’ll be around here doing chores without anyone saying a word.” He belched contentedly, and smiled at Binis. “But you’re right—I don’t do it alone. I don’t have to check Morlan’s widow any more, and I didn’t have to find homes for the children whose parents were killed by lightning in the pasture last spring. This grange is beginning to function as a village should—with care and common sense.”
“And that’s the other reason you wouldn’t be Marshal-General, isn’t it?” Luap asked. “You had in mind what a grange should be, but you wanted to show it, not tell people.”
Cob flushed and looked away. “I’m no more skilled with words than Gird was,” he said. “It’s what he did, after all. He showed us—”
“And yelled at us,” Luap said, grinning. Cob’s dream was not his dream, but he knew it came close to Gird’s dream . . . and he could see it was a worthy dream. “But it’s going to take unusual Marshals to do what you’re doing.”
Now Cob grinned back. “Oh—well, that young Seri, you know, she used to talk of things like this. Her and me and Raheli and some of the others: we were thinking what a grange is for, when there’s no war. It can’t be just to collect money to send to Fin Panir.” Binis started to say something, then stopped. Luap wondered if Cob had convinced her; he doubted it. But Cob had convinced him.
That day and the next, with the drifts too high for travel, they stayed in Cob’s grange and helped with his definition of grange work. Luap found himself able to admit he had picked a bad time to come looking for soil, but that he’d wanted something to work with for spring planting. “And I was with Dorhaniya when she died,” he said. “I’m glad I was there, though I’d hoped she’d like the new place. . . .”
“Tell you what,” Cob said. “Come thaw, I’ll find you a place to take your soil—there’s unclaimed land between me and the next grange south. If I understand it, we’ll thaw here before you will, so you won’t lose much time. How would that be?”
“I don’t think the Marshal-General would approve,” said Binis. Cob gave her a look Luap would not like to have turned on him.
“I didn’t ask you, Binis, and I’m not asking the Marshal-General. If it’s unclaimed land, he can’t deny it: he’s already given his approval. Whatever his quarrels with Luap, the law says he’s made a contract, and he can’t back out now.”
“But we’re not supposed to help—”
“We’re not supposed to act like bratty children quarreling over sweets, either.” Cob glared at her, red-faced. “D’you think this is what Gird wanted? We won the war; the mageborn aren’t our lords any more. Now it’s time for peace, and peace means helping each other. And you might remember that Luap here was Gird’s closest assistant: he did more for Gird than any of the rest of us, including your precious Marshal-General.”
Luap had not expected that strong a defense, even from Cob. It embarrassed him, shook his certainty in the peasants’ opposition—a certainty that Binis increased whenever she opened her mouth. Now Cob turned to him.
“How about it—will you trust me to find you some good soil, within the Marshal-General’s limitations?”
“Of course, I will,” Luap said. “I will come back to Fin Panir in early spring—your early spring.”
“Good. That’s settled. It’ll save Binis here from riding all over the countryside in winter—I don’t suppose you can whisk her back to Fin Panir by magery, eh?”
“Alas, no. We’ll have to go as we came.”
It was as cold a trip as the one out, but Binis seemed slightly less hostile; at least she seemed convinced that Luap, too, suffered from the cold. Luap hoped that Cob would not get in too much trouble with the Marshal-General while he was gone . . . but when he considered the two men, he thought Cob would come off well in any contest between them. So he returned to the stronghold with the embroidery Dorhaniya had given him, determined to prove himself to Cob as well as his own people.
“Now we can begin to move,” the black-cloaked leader said. “For mortals time runs swiftly; they become accustomed to safety, and cease to watch for danger. They hope all will be well, and hoping so, believe it to be. A year, two years, of peace, and they think peace eternal.” He paused for the scornful laughter, like a rustle of dry leaves, before going on. “We must learn more about them,” he said. “Especially the prince. We must know them better than they know themselves—not a difficult task. For each weakness, we will provide the appropriate temptation . . . and remember, if we can use what they call their virtures to entrap them, so much the better.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Luap returned to Fin Panir while the canyons of his own land were still choked with snow. This time, the guards at the High Lord’s Hall merely shrugged when he appeared. The Marshal-General, he was told, was “in conference,” too busy to see him; Luap found someone who claimed to know where Binis was. He went down to the lower city to visit Eris. Dorhaniya had left her enough to live on, she had said after the funeral, and her own skill at needlecraft would help.
“Sir,” she said, when she answered his knock on the door. From her expression, she had not expected to see him again. Then she relaxed. “You’ve come for the banner?”
He had forgotten it, in the sorrow of Dorhaniya’s death and the difficult trip with Binis. “No—or rather yes, I will be glad to have it, of course, but that’s not why I came. How are you?”
“I miss her,” Eris said. Then she stood aside and beckoned him in. “There’s lots of them don’t understand, you know. Why I ever stayed with her after the war, why I stay here now. She was just another rich mageborn, they say, just another foolish old rich woman.” She led Luap back to the small sitting room he had seen before. “Of course that’s true: she was old, and rich, and foolish, and mageborn, but that wasn’t the half of it. You know: you met her.”
“I know.” Luap looked around. He had thought he could forget nothing he had seen, and yet he could not be sure nothing had changed. The embroidery frame was missing . . . but what else?
“I didn’t stay just because she was rich, and I never wanted for anything while she was alive. It wasn’t that.”
“I know,” Luap said again. He had never completely understood the bond between Eris and Dorhaniya, but it had nothing to do with gold or comfort: he knew that much.