“We haven’t seen much rain on our journey,” said Quaeryt. “I imagine it will be helpful for your fields and pastures.”
“It definitely will be,” said Daalyn. “It’s been a dry spring.”
“Your lands are rather expansive, it would seem,” offered Quaeryt.
“You’re wondering why this isn’t a high holding?” asked Laedica.
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
Daalyn smiled. “It was once. But Laedica’s great-grandsire renounced his standing as a High Holder. He made a point of bestowing the lands on his eldest daughter when he had no sons, and when she refused to marry any of High Holder blood who were interested in her … or the holding. The other nearest High Holders petitioned to have the lands seized. Before the rex was even informed or could act, the old man had her married to the man she loved, claiming he was a distant cousin, and officially bestowed the lands on him. Ever since then, the eldest child has received the lands … if at times through a similar stratagem. The lands are officially mine, but they will go to our eldest. She’s five.”
“But you’re not a High Holder?”
“No one ever petitioned to be reinstated as a High Holder, and given the way Kharst and his sire treated them, it’s likely worked out better.”
“No one talks about it,” added Laedica, “but there are quite a few landholders who are neither crofters nor peasants, nor High Holders.”
“But … what about standing … tariffs?” asked Quaeryt.
“We’re officially produce factors,” explained Laedica, “and we pay factor’s tariffs to the nearest factors’ council. That’s in Yapres, north of here.”
“Not Roleon?”
“That didn’t work out,” said Laedica. “Yapres is better suited to our needs. Most landholders who are not High Holders have similar arrangements, and the factors are happy to collect the tariffs because that enhances their stature. The rex was always happy because we pay and are far less trouble than the High Holders.”
“So only the High Holders are unhappy?”
“They were miffed that one of their younger sons didn’t get a holding, but they didn’t make a fuss for long because it might have drawn the attention of the rex.”
Once again, Quaeryt was both amused and amazed at the complexity and unwieldiness he was finding in Bovaria. “That has seemed to work out for you.”
“It has indeed.” Daalyn looked at his wife. “You really do need some rest, dear. Tomorrow will come early, rain or no rain.” Then he looked to Quaeryt. “Good evening. Commander. If you would excuse us?”
“Please go,” replied Quaeryt warmly, looking at Laedica. “You do need to take care of yourself.”
“You two would smother me,” she replied, not quite tartly, “even if you are right. Good night, Commander.”
Quaeryt inclined his head, then watched as they reentered the house. The door closed. He turned to look into the darkness and the rain.
37
In time, Quaeryt left the front porch, carefully closed the front door, and made his way up the steps to the end bedchamber on the second level, not without smiling as he passed the closed door where he heard the muffled voices of three young imager officers, with only a few clear phrases. For several moments, he paused and listened.
“… be a muddy ride tomorrow…”
“… not going anywhere … rain for days this way…”
“… be clear by tomorrow…”
“… no farsight in him…”
With a last smile, he turned and walked toward the end of the hall, and the bedchamber where he’d left his gear. That room was clearly the favored guest chamber with an overlarge bed, a writing desk and chair, as well as an armoire and even an adjoining washroom and jakes, for which Quaeryt was grateful. He undressed methodically, still half wondering why he’d been impelled to mention what had happened to Vaelora, even the little that he’d mentioned.
Tiredness … worry, he told himself as he climbed under the single sheet, certainly enough in the warm damp air. Outside, beyond the inner shutters of the room, the rain continued to fall, and he finally fell asleep.
Sometime later, he turned over, half aware, and realized that the rain was falling more heavily and that the air was cooler, then much colder, and that, outside, the wind was building into a low moaning. That became a howling, and the inner window shutters blew open with explosive force and icy rain sprayed into the room, coating everything.
Quaeryt struggled against the icy gale to get to his feet, and suddenly he was back on the mare, with ice pelting down on him, yet each sleeting pellet burned as if it had been a white-hot coal. Trying to escape the rain of ice and fire, he urged the mare forward, but she only reared as a curtain of rubble poured down toward them from somewhere unseen, even while the fire- and ice-fall intensified.
The mare reared again … and the ground opened up beneath her and Quaeryt … and Quaeryt could feel himself falling into the depths, the mare beneath him, as a tidal wave of ice and fire and rubble poured down on them … burying him in endless burning rock and rubble.
Abruptly there was stillness …
… and Quaeryt shook himself, struggling awake.
As had happened too often, he was surrounded with chill and whiteness. Everything in the room was coated with a thin film of brilliant white ice, even the sheets that half covered him. He sat up all the way and flicked the sheets, spraying icy fragments away from the bed. Then he stood and brushed the remaining thin fragments off the bed.
After a moment he walked to the window, ignoring the icy fragments beneath his bare feet. He eased open one of the inside shutters, then pushed the window open slightly, and stood in the warm moist air that flowed past him into the chill room.
Outside it was pitch-dark, but he could hear the unceasing heavy patter of rain, rain that fell as if it would never cease.
Like some nightmares.
For a time, he stood there letting the warmer air remove the chill from the room and from his skin, hoping, futilely, that it would remove the chill from within. He did his best to image away the ice fragments, glad that the rain he had felt had been part of his dream, and that the room had not been drenched. Finally, he closed the window and shutters and walked back toward the wide bed.
He just hoped he could get back to sleep.
38
By early on Jeudi afternoon, even after losing an entire day to the rain on Mardi, Quaeryt and the two companies had passed the point where the Roiles River joined the Aluse, flowing out of the northwest, its waters a greenish blue, but lost within a few hundred yards in the grayer waters of the larger river. Another two milles past the junction, they reached the large town of Yapres, somewhat smaller than Daaren, Quaeryt thought, and very dissimilar, although both were river towns, but the dwellings and shops in Yapres were especially well kept, and the streets, and even the lanes and alleys, were largely clean. There were a number of inns, and several buildings that looked to be gaming houses, the first Quaeryt had seen, or at least noticed, in Bovaria. Quaeryt had noticed that for the last five milles into the town, the river road improved markedly. He also understood why Laedica and Daalyn had associated themselves with the factors of Yapres, rather than those of Roleon.
The Aluse was far narrower at Yapres than the Laar was at Daaren. Given that there were no towns of any size for another fifteen milles, or so the maps showed, Quaeryt decided to stop early … as well as to deal with some unforeseen reshoeing of a number of mounts.
The largest inn was the Copper Tankard, and Quaeryt had few qualms about settling both companies there. The boats Quaeryt saw tied at the modest piers across the river square from the inn were narrower than the flatboats used farther south on the Aluse or those used on the Laar, but still had a comparatively shallow draft, suggesting that they were not that stable in rough water and that the Aluse had become fairly shallow. Then again, those boats might have come from farther upriver.