It hurt, but it was for the best. There could never be anything between a princess and a stableboy, nor even a wagon driver. He supposed that it had crept up on them. He really had not noticed it until the previous day. They had been a bunch of kids together, a dozen or more of them. It had only been near the end of the last winter that he and Inos had started to drift together, and together start drifting to the edge of the bunch. And then he had gone off to the mainland when spring came.
She had kissed him good-bye, but even then he had not thought very much about it—not until they were apart. Then he had realized how he missed her smile and the comfortableness of having her near—and realized that she didn’t kiss other men good-bye.
And lately he had started to dream about her. But she would go off to Kinvale and find some handsome noble to come back and be king after Holindarn died.
And he would have to find some other girl to kiss.
Trouble was, there weren’t other girls like Inos.
“Can you remember much of your mother, Rap?”
Rap looked in surprise at Lin, who was still a little paler than usual. “Why?”
“Some of the women say she was a seer.”
Rap frowned, trying to remember if his mother had ever admitted anything like that or done anything like that.
“So?” he said.
“Growing up,” Lin said. “I just wondered… You’ve been doing some strange things today, Rap. You’ve never been able to do things like that before, have you?”
“Like what? I didn’t do anything!”
Lin was unconvinced. “Could it be something that comes with growing up, like shaving?”
Rap would not talk about such things with chatterbox Lin. “Does that cast bother you?”
Lin looked down at his arm. “Yes, some. Why?”
“Because,” Rap said, “if you start hinting that my mother needed to shave, then you’re going to have two of them.”
2
Summer, said the hardworking folk of Krasnegar, was the two weeks they were given to prepare for the other fifty. There was no small truth in that.
True, summer usually lasted longer than two weeks, but it came late and left soon, and it was marred by endless toil. Without the profit of their summer labors, the people would not survive the merciless winter that was sure to follow. A few hardy crops were sown and most years those could be harvested before the first snows, to augment the grain that must be imported by ship. The other years were destined to bring famine and sickness before summer came again. Peat must be cut and dried and carried to the town in load after load, to blunt the deadly teeth of frost during the long nights. Hay, also, standing high upon the wagons, crossed the causeway at every tide so that the king’s horses could eat until spring came again and the cattle might give milk for the children the next year. Fish must be caught and smoked, livestock slaughtered and their beef salted; seal meat or whale meat laid by, also, if the boats were blessed with fortune. Vegetables and berries, rushes and driftwood and furs… the scanty fruits of the hard land were carefully gathered and jealously hoarded away.
Here and there in the bare hills stood forlorn hamlets and clumps of cottages, where life was even harder than it was in the town. But for most of the year there was nothing for men to do on the land except survive, and survival was easier in the city—or death less lonely—and so the cottagers also huddled in with the townsfolk during the long winters, like badgers in their earth. When the snows streamed off the hills in spring, they emerged once more to their toil, and voices were heard again under the sky.
Without careful management their efforts would never have sufficed, and the leadership came from the king, or more directly from his factor, a tall and rawboned jotunn named Foronod, who was everywhere at all times and reputedly wore out three horses a day. His water-blue eyes saw everything, and he commanded everyone in sharp, laconic phrases like small knives, never wasting a word or a moment, never sparing a soul, least of all himself. In high summer he seemed to sleep even less than the sun. His gangling figure could appear at any time anywhere in the kingdom, long legs hanging limp at the sides of his pony, silver hair flashing a warning before him as he came into view. His memory was as capacious as the palace storerooms. He knew to the inch how much hay had been gathered, how much peat; he knew the state of the herds and the times of the tides and he could call down the wrath of the Gods or the Powers on anyone caught slacking or sleeping except for reasons of total exhaustion. He knew the strengths and abilities and weaknesses of every man and woman, girl and boy in his whole great workforce.
Foronod noted that a wagon had been repaired and returned. He doubtless noted as well that a certain stableboy had been promoted to driver, and that fact, also, would have been stored away until it might be needed. But the factor had many drivers and that boy had talents that others did not.
By nightfall, Rap was back with the herds.
3
“Turn around, my dear,” Aunt Kade said. “Charming! Yes, very nice! Definitely charming.”
Inos did not feel charming, she felt wretched. There was a nasty hard feeling at the back of her throat and a dull coldness all over her. Her arms and legs were made of stone. Last night she had slept in her own bed for the last time. An hour ago she had eaten her last meal in the palace—not that she had been able to eat anything. Every time she did anything at all now it was for the last time.
And her slimy mood was not helped by the charmingness of her dress, either. She was wearing her precious golden dragon silk and she hated it. Somehow she blamed it for starting all this. Now it had been made up into a gown, and she thought it looked ludicrous, not charming. She could not believe that ladies in the Impire wore anything so outlandish. The minstrel must have been fantasizing when he sketched such absurdities as lace dangling over her hands and shoulders like small pillows. Trumpets indeed!
And if the dress was bad, the hat was unthinkable—a smaller trumpet, a high golden cone all frilly with more lace. She felt like a freak in it, a clown. Every small boy in Krasnegar was going to laugh himself hysterical at the sight of her as she rode down to the dock. The sailors would fall off the ship laughing. Probably the ladies in the Impire would kill themselves. Inos was sure they would all be wearing bonnets like any sane woman wore.
The only consolation was that Aunt Kade looked worse. Her conical hat stuck up like a chimney pot and her dumpy form could never be made to resemble a trumpet. A drum, maybe, or even a lute, but no trumpet. She had appropriated the apple-blossom silk, which was all wrong for her shape, although Inos had to admit that the colors matched her white hair and pink cheeks. Aunt Kade, moreover, was excited, bubbling with happiness, chattering like a flock of birds in joyful anticipation.
“Charming!” Aunt Kade repeated. “Of course we shall have to acquire many more gowns when we are established at Kinvale, but at least we shall not seem too rustic when we arrive. And the good citizens of Krasnegar shall see how ladies should dress these days. I do hope the coachman remembers to go slowly. Hold your head up, dear. You look like a unicorn when you bend forward. Oh, Inos, you will love Kinvale!” She clasped her pudgy hands. “I so look forward to showing it all to you—the dancing and the balls, the banquets and the elegant conversation! I was not much older than you when I first arrived, and I danced every night for months. The music! Fine cooking! Gentle countryside… you have no idea how green and prosperous the landscape is, compared to these harsh hills. And the handsome young men!” She simpered and then sighed.