ONE

Marlovan Iasca, late summer 4058 AF

This chronicle in the history of the Marlovans begins nearly a century after the death of the man famed throughout the world as Inda Elgar, Elgar the Fox, Elgar the Pirate, and a few other less savory names. But to Marlovans, who cared nothing for the rest of the world’s opinion, he was Indevan-Harskialdna, the king’s war commander who never lost a battle.

It’s always difficult to determine exactly when and where to start, because history is more like a river than a box: it bends and twists, flowing onward seemingly without beginning or end. But a chronicle has to have a beginning and end.

We will start in the northern part of the kingdom—an empire in all but name—once called Iasca Leror. Ever since Marlovan had become the language of government as well as military matters, the kingdom was more and more often referred to as Marlovan Iasca.

For reasons that I hope will become clear, at first I will avoid Choreid Dhelerei, the royal city, as well as the powerful Jarlates, which in this time were more like isolated kingdoms. Instead, we commence this record at a small freehold lying between the Olavayir and Halivayir Jarlates, called Farendavan. Our primary concern here at the start is not with the holder (who was away more than he was home, serving as patrol captain in Idego) or his wife, who ran the holding, nor even with his son, but with the elder of his two daughters, Danet.

Though Danet Farendavan’s mother’s journal was scrupulously preserved by her progeny, anyone glancing at it could be forgiven for assuming the woman had no family feeling, as most of the journal is detailed accounts of linen weaves, dye lots, trade, and stable statistics.

For example, the day Danet’s life changed, her mother’s journal listed a complicated order for three different varieties of indigo, deep-water sponges and carmine fungi, saffron, and madder, then at the bottom is a brief note: Spoke to girls about marriage agreement Olavayir eagle-clan.

Danet was almost twenty. Her sister Hliss was sixteen. They had been out with their cousins and the stable hands doing ground work with the horses when their mother’s runner appeared. “You’re wanted. The both.”

Surprise semaphored between the sisters, then Danet glanced at her closest cousin and pulled a face, handing off supervision with a flick of an open palm. Mother never interrupted chores unless it was important news, which was almost always bad. Danet’s first thought was to wonder what she might have done wrong.

By habit, Hliss waited for her older sister to lead the way. They hurried back to the low, rambling stone house they called home, and into the big chamber where the looms were set up. The dusty smell of hay and horse gave way to the back-of-the-nose oily smell of wool; Danet sighed, recognizing the setup for weaving the sturdy cotton-wool twill from which their coats and riding trousers would be made. Winter work. Mother was starting the process of getting everything ready.

Hliss’s face lifted. Danet couldn’t understand how her sister could love being indoors working the looms and sigh over stable chores, when Danet felt exactly the opposite. The only indoor labor Danet loved was keeping tallies (what in other lands was called counting, thus the origin of the title ‘count’), because then you knew exactly what you had, and where you were. But once Danet had been trained, Mother kept the tallies and only let Danet observe. “I’m faster,” Mother said with the hint of impatience that characterized her. “And whoever you marry will no doubt have their ways and rules. It’s enough that you now understand the method.”

A flash of sun slanting in the narrow windows reflected off Mother’s yellow-white hair as she looked their way. Then, instead of beckoning her daughters to help set up spindle or loom, she said, “In here, girls.”

Hliss sent a round-eyed glance at Danet as Mother led the way into her private room, where shelves of carefully bound household tallies took up one wall, and the most precious of the dyes another, the narrow bed under the window almost an afterthought. This room, from which Mother ruled the house, flax fields, barns, and training grounds, was considered by the household to be as formidable as the seldom-used Family Chamber at the other end of the house, with the few and modest Farendavan trophies on the walls.

Mother dropped straight-backed onto her stool alongside the table and pointed at the bench. “Sit down.”

As her daughters sat side by side, Mother compressed her lips and studied them—not as she saw them every day, but as strangers might see them. Both were lean and long-legged, Danet with dun-colored hair properly braided and looped, Hliss softer and rounder, with pretensions to prettiness (for those who looked for that sort of thing) in her fawn-dark eyes framed by pale cornsilk hair. Danet gazed at the world out of eyes too muddy to be either blue or brown, her thin, straight lips and set chin below round cheeks a match for Mother’s own.

The truth was, Mother did not like what she had to say, but the good of the family had to come first.

Best to get it over with, then. She wiped a strand of damp hair off her forehead. “There’s no time to waste, and you both know how little patience I have for questions I can’t answer. I’ve just received a runner from the Jarlan of Olavayir. It seems the marriage arrangements concerning your cousin Hadand Arvandais up north have fallen through. Whatever the reason, that has nothing to do with us.”

She paused, then said bluntly, “I’m certain that Han Fath suggested you to the Jarlan. You know I used to ride with the Fath girls scouting for hill brigands, when I was your age.”

From Mother this was a very long speech, and Danet had learned to evaluate what Mother didn’t say as well as what she did. Danet already knew that the Faths—Riders for the Tyavayir Jarlate—were one of the few clans Mother respected thoroughly. She thought less of the Tyavayirs, and less than that of the Olavayirs.

But Mother said nothing against them now. She went on, “You know I was trained by the Faths after I lost my own family, and I suspect they thought to honor me in putting forward your names. However it came about, the Olavayirs want you. Both.”

Danet said in disbelief, “The royal family? Us?”

“Jarl branch. Eagle, not dolphin. You’ll adopt in. The Olavayirs are all that way. Man or woman, if you marry into them, you take their name.”

Hliss’s eyes filled with tears. “I thought we could wait. Until we were older.”

Mother sighed shortly, and Hliss hastily thumbed her eyes.

Mother knew how tender-hearted Hliss was, and schooled her voice to patience. “I did say I believed we’d leave this question for the future, and Hliss, I understand that you and the draper’s boy have been on fire since spring. But you know your romances have nothing to do with marriage alliances.”

Danet had been hearing a lot about Forever and Love Till We Die from her sister, who had discovered boys half a year ago. To draw Mother’s attention away from Hliss, Danet asked, “What do we get?”

Mother gave her a glance of approval. “We’ll get trade favor for our linens and a pennon to send if we need protection. I hope word going out that you two are marrying into the Olavayirs will cause those horse thieves up Cedar Mountain way to think again before trying any more raids.”

She pursed her lips and made a spitting motion to one side; it was to one or another of these bands that she had lost her entire family, and herself left for dead. Those thieves had chosen a lair in the difficult country between Tyavayir and the great Jarlate of Yvanavayir. Danet had grown up hearing the adults jaw on about how in the olden days, the King’s Riders ranged the kingdom borders, seeing to that kind of trouble. But now the Jarls had to protect their own borders because there were no King’s Riders outside the royal city and its environs. And nobody ventured into those treacherous mountains unless they had to.

Hliss dropped her head at Mother’s emphatic Ptooie! She hated the thought of violence.

Danet said quickly, “What do we have to give besides horses?”

Mother raised her hand, palm out, two fingers up. “Besides the two mares, a full bolt each of undyed linen and rider-gray linsey-woolsey, which I expect will result in plenty of orders for those trade favors, especially the first,” she added, pride briefly showing in a tight smile.

The rest of the fingers went up. “And a riding if the Jarl calls, same if the king calls, riding under Olavayir command. All equipment pertaining and a month’s fodder.”

“Nine riders and trained horses would be hard on us, if there’s trouble anywhere near us, and the Jarl is fighting somewhere else,” Danet said. “You won’t send our best, surely?”

“I will,” Mother stated. “If we send them good horses, that helps our prestige, especially if our riding does well at their summer games next year. We’ll make certain of that,” Mother added. “Your father promised to send your brother next spring to pick the men and lead them himself.”

It was only a wargame, but tender-hearted Hliss dipped her head again. Occasionally fellows came back from wargames with broken bones. And they all had heard about the second cousin who hadn’t come back at all from a game up over the mountains, where they knew that their kin, the Arvandais clan, played very rough indeed.

Mother glanced out the window, squared her thin shoulders, and unlimbered another long speech to her silent, wondering girls. “Of course it’s not the royal family. They only match with other Jarl families. That’s good, as far as I see it. I understand the royal city is quiet now under Kendred Olavayir as regent, but it wasn’t when I was your age, or the generation before, and we don’t know what young Evred is going to be like when he comes of age. I think it just as well to keep you in the north.”

Danet had no argument with that. She had never experienced any desire to see the royal city.

“Danet, you’re to go to the Jarl’s second son. I forget his name, and he likely doesn’t use it anyway.”

“Probably another Hasta,” Hliss said with a soft laugh. “That will make six among us.”

“Not among us. You are going to them,” Mother reminded Hliss, who looked down again, her gentle smile vanishing.

“I?” Hliss asked, her soft brown eyes round with apprehension.

“Hliss, you’re for the Rider branch, but no sooner than two years’ time. I stipulated for that. You’re still training, and if they expect you to captain a border scout riding or manage the stables, then you’ll need to know how to give orders. So no marriage until you’re at least eighteen. Twenty if I can put them off, as the boy you’re intended for is no older than you. Boys should never marry before twenty, they’re too silly. I would put the marrying age for boys at thirty, but no one asked me. The Olavayirs want Danet right away. They seem to marry young.”

Hliss heaved a quiet sigh of relief.

Mother turned her wide blue gaze on Danet. “We’re all going to pitch in to get you ready. No Olavayir is going to scorn your things, even if we aren’t Jarl-family rank. About that. Your marrying among them will no doubt seem to their connections a jump up. Though we’re kin to the Arvandais up north and through me to the Faths of Tyavayir, you’ll no doubt arrive to resentment from secondary families who had ambitions for their daughters.”

Mother turned her palm down flat. “This waiting until you’re full-grown for betrothals is a bad custom for so many reasons. It was different in your great-great-grandmothers’ day, when everyone knew from birth who was to go where, and you had a lifetime to settle to it.”

And they’d heard about that difference many times; Danet hoped that the “Girls should grow up with the family they will manage” lecture wasn’t hovering at Mother’s lips.

But Mother felt she had jawed long enough, and there was work to be done. “So. We have what we have. Let’s take a look at your gear.”

“When is ‘right away’?”

“I stipulated a month.”

A month! Danet bit back an exclamation that would not be welcome. A month was at once too short and too long: too short for going away forever, and too long for curiosity.

But one thing about time, it passes, she decided as Mother charged out of her room, issuing a stream of orders. Especially when you’re busy.