She shook her head. “I do not think I like your people at all. Do you think I would share my bed with any man my husband did not know and love? Would I bear a child for my husband to father, by a stranger or an enemy?” After a moment, she added, “It is true, I wished to bear Damon a child first, but you know what happened, and might happen again. We are too closely kin, so now we may decide to have no children between us, since he does not need an heir of Ridenow blood, and a child you give us is likely to be healthier and stronger than one he might give me.”
“I see.” He could admit it made some sense, but he paused to examine his own feelings. A child of his own, by a woman he loved. But not by his beloved wife. A child who would call some other man father, on whom he would have no claim. And how would Callista feel? Would it seem another mark of her distance, her exclusion? Would she feel betrayed?
Ellemir said gently, “I am sure she will be glad for me too. Surely you do not think I would add a feather’s weight to her sorrow when she has had so much to bear.”
He still felt uncertain. “Does she know?”
“No, though she may suspect, of course.” She hesitated. “I always forget you are not one of us. I will tell her if you wish, though one of our own would want to tell her himself.”
The complex courtesies of such things were beyond him, but suddenly he wished to do what was right in his adopted world. He said firmly, “I will tell her.”
But he would choose his own time, when she could not doubt his love.
He went into his own room, in confusion, and while he made himself ready for the evening meal, his thoughts ran a strange counterpoint to the mundane business of bathing, trimming the beard which, in defiance of custom, he had begun to grow, putting on his neat indoor clothing.
His own child. Here, on a strange world, and not even the child of his own wife. But Ellemir did not think it strange, and Damon had, evidently, known for some time and approved. A strange world, and he was part of it.
Before he was ready, he heard riders in the courtyard, and when he came downstairs he found Damon’s brother Kieran, returning from a wintertime visit to Thendara with his eldest son, a redheaded, bright-eyed boy of fourteen or so, and half a dozen Guardsmen, paxmen and hangers-on. Andrew had not liked Damon’s eldest brother Lorenz, but he found Kieran likable, and welcomed news from the outside world, as did Dom Esteban.
“Tell me how Domenic fares,” demanded the old man, and Kieran smiled, saying, “As it happens, I saw a good deal of him. Kester” — he indicated his son — “is due to go into the cadet corps this summer, so I felt it best to refuse his offer to take Danvan’s place as cadet-master; no man can be master to his own son.” He smiled to take the sting from the words, and said, “I do not wish to be as hard on my son as you had to be on yours, Lord Alton.”
“Is he well? Does he manage the Guards competently?”
“As near as I can tell, you could hardly do better yourself,” Kieran said. “He sits long and listens to wiser heads. He has asked much advice from Kyril Ardais and from Danvan, and even of Lorenz, though I do not think” — he smiled sidelong at Damon, a shared joke — “that he really thinks much more of Lorenz than we do. Still, he is wary, and diplomatic, has made the right friends, and has no favorites. His bredin are well-behaved lads both, young Cathal Lindir, and one of his nedestro brothers — I think the name is Dezirado?”
“Desiderio,” said Dom Esteban, with a smile of relief. “I am glad to hear that Dezi is safe and well too.”
“Oh, aye, the three of them are always together, but no brawling, no whoring, no roistering. They are as sober as monks all three. You would think Domenic realized, like a man three times his age, that such a young lad in the command will be watched night and day. Not that they are sad-faced prigs either — young Nic always has a laugh or a jest — but he is holding down the responsibility with both hands,” Kieran told them, and Andrew remembering the merry boy who had stood beside him at his wedding, was glad Domenic was doing so well. As for Dezi, well, perhaps a responsible and challenging job, and knowing that Domenic acknowledged his family status as the old man would never do, might at last help the boy find himself. He hoped so. He knew what it was to feel you did not belong anywhere.
“Is there other news, brother-in-law?” Ellemir asked eagerly, and Kieran smiled. “No doubt I should have taken heed of the ladies’ gossip in Thendara, sister. Let me think… There was a riot in the street where the Free Amazon’s Guild-house stands, and the story goes that some man claimed his wife had been taken there unwilling—”
“That is not true,” Ferrika said angrily. “Forgive me, Dom Kieran, but a woman must come herself and beg admission there!”
Kieran laughed good-naturedly. “I do not doubt it, mestra, but so the tale runs in Thendara, that he sent hired swords to take her back, and they say his wife fought alongside the Amazons defending her house, and wounded him. The tale grows ever greater with each mouth that repeats it Someday, no doubt, they will say she killed him and nailed his head to the wall. Someone was exhibiting the body of a two-headed foal in the market, but my paxman told me it was a fake, and a clumsy one at that. In his boyhood he was apprentice for a time to a harness-maker and knows their tricks. And, let me think a moment, oh, yes. As I rode through the hills, I heard of a field of kireseth in bloom with the warm days, not a true Ghost Wind as in the summertime, but a winter blooming.”
Dom Esteban nodded, smiling. He said, “It is rare, but it happens, and it used to be thought fortunate.”
Callista explained in a low voice to Andrew: “Kireseth is a flower which blooms but rarely in the hills. The pollen and flowers are the source from which we make kirian. When it blooms in high summer, with the heat and wind in the hills, it sweeps down from the hills in a wind of madness, a Ghost Wind they call it. Men do strange things under its influence, and when there is a true Ghost Wind we ring the alarms and barricade ourselves in our homes, for the beasts run mad in the forests, and sometimes nonhumans come down out of the hills and attack mankind. I saw them once as a child,” she said, shuddering.
Dom Esteban went on: “But with a winter blooming, it cannot last long enough to be serious. A village’s folk will forget their sowing and ploughing, leave their gardens untended for a day or two while they play the fool, but after a few hours the rain comes to settle the pollen to the ground. The worst thing I ever heard during a winter blooming was that the scavenger wolves in the forest grew bold — the pollen affects the brain of man and beasts alike — and came into the fields to attack cattle or horses. Mostly a winter blooming is only an unexpected holiday.”
Andrew remembered that he had been warned by Damon not to handle or smell the kireseth flowers in the still-room.
“It has one other side effect,” said Ferrika, with a broad smile. “There will be more work in that village for the midwife, when autumn comes. Women who have chosen not to have children, or even old matrons whose children are grown, sometimes find themselves with child.”
Dom Esteban guffawed. “Ah, yes, when I was a lad they used to make jokes at weddings, if the marriage had been arranged by the families and the bride was reluctant. Then one summer there was a wedding — oh, off to the north, near Edelweiss — and a Ghost Wind blew during the feasting. The festivities were rowdy, feasting and drinking and… well it was indecorous, and went on for days. I was too young, alas, to take much good from it, but I remember seeing some things usually shielded from children’s eyes.” He wiped tears of laughter from his face. “And then, more than half a year later, many children were born about whose parentage there was, to say the very least, a question. Now they do not make such jokes at weddings any more.”