"He isn't ugly," Jeweline said quickly, then blushed again.
Berchte gave a knowing nod. "The fool likes you, girlie. He never gave me blastberries and sleepyseed. So choose: your ungrateful sisters or him. Or walk away entirely. No one's forcing you to complete the pattern."
"You're a bitch," Jeweline said. "A horrible old bitch."
"Life's the bitch, girlie," Mother Berchte said affably. "That's your third lesson. You can leave now."
Jeweline gave Mother Berchte once last look, then spun and marched out of the cave. Berchte picked up her knitting again. Knit one, purl two. Knit one, purl two.
Nassirskaegi bleated a question.
"She's going to rescue her sisters, of course," Berchte replied gruffly. "But I don't think she's going to stay with them. Not anymore."
Knit one, purl two. Knit one, purl two. Wire unwound steadily from Berchte's cable spool and Berchte allowed herself a heavy sigh. She had gotten a young girl to start thinking for herself, and that was nice.
But she was really going to miss Father Fluss.
Arms and the Woman by Nancy Kress
The hour after the third-year class in Advanced History of Armor Styles was supposed to be my research time, but a tyro knight had asked to see me, and of course tyros are so sacred that we mere loremasters must drop everything and counsel them, no matter what valuable papers might miss the Loremaster Quarterly deadline. To make it worse, the apprentice turned out to be Tyro Marigold. I have little patience with stupid people; it is my only fault. Marigold is the stupidest apprentice that Castle Olansa has ever had. By far.
"Loremaster Gwillam, I'm being haunted," she said, sitting on the edge of the wooden bench in my study, her blue eyes perfectly round. The emblem on her breastplate was upside down. I reached over and twisted it to its locked and upright position.
"If you're being haunted, then go get a spell from Father Martin."
"I can't, because-"
"Don't tell me you `can't.' You know tyros are exempt from hauntings during all of training except vigil week." Although probably she didn't know. Certainly I hadn't been able to teach her much about chivalric lore. Why should Father Martin have been any more successful teaching her about death duty?
"I can't see Father Martin about this because-"
"Don't tell me `can't,' girl! Just do it!"
"-the ghost is my aunt, First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin!"
That, of course, put a different cast on the situation. I leaned forward and scrutinized Marigold carefully. No, she wasn't lying. Her pop-eyed blue gaze looked genuinely baffled, and genuinely frightened. Besides, she was too stupid to lie.
Which was what made the situation interesting. Ghosts almost never choose relatives to haunt for their tuitions. Obviously an unstilled ghost has to haunt someone to learn whatever lessons it failed to learn in life, but usually relatives are part of the reason they didn't learn the lesson in the first place. Wisdom deficits tend to run in families. Most ghosts need to go outside the family to discover the principles they didn't see illustrated in life. So why was a First Dame haunting her own niece?
And why Marigold? What could a tyro this stupid-she was dead last in the lists for jousting, hunting, arcana, military strategy, fencing, astrology, and heraldry-possibly teach anybody? The only award Marigold had ever won, in three years at Castle Olansa, was Miss Congeniality, and I suspect that was a pity vote by the other tyros. The tyromistress is constantly trying to eradicate their sentimentality, but with thirty-three teenage girls in the tyro class alone, it's difficult.
Marigold squirmed under my close inspection, looked away, looked back, nervously fiddled with her armor emblem, which again ended up upside-down. No, she wasn't lying.
"Tyro, when did you last see the ghost of First Dame Cecilie?"
"Last night! At midnight, Loremaster. Oh, she was so aw-ful! She wore full armor-breastplate, tace, tasset, pauldron, all of it-and was smeared with blood! And she had no… no right arm!" The young voice was filled with horror. The right arm, the sword arm.
"All right," I said. "You may go."
"G-go? But… but what should I do?"
"Nothing, until I send for you again. That will be this evening. I need to think."
At the mention of thinking, Marigold nodded reverently, in homage to a foreign activity. She tiptoed out, so as not to disturb my thinking, her armor clanking on the stone threshold. When she'd clanked out of sight, I closed the door to my study and posted a watchraven. I needed to use everything at my disposal, both scrolls and spells, to learn what I could about First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin.
"What did he say? What did he tell you?" The tyros crowded around Marigold in the Third Bedchamber. They had just come in from strength training and the smell of strong healthy sweat perfumed the summer air. "What's he going to do, Marigold?"
"He's going to think."
The other residents of the Third Bedchamber nodded sagely, but Tyro Anna frowned. She was first bed in the First Bedchamber, top of the lists, and wouldn't have ventured this far near the bottom for anything less momentous than haunting by a relative. Anna was tough, smart, and much resented, although this did not save her from Loremaster Gwillam's sarcasm. Some of the other girls turned to stare at her coldly.
Anna said, " `Think'? That's it? What action is he going to take on your behalf, Marigold?"
"He's going to send for me this evening," Marigold said. She smiled, glad to have been able to produce information for Anna, whom she admired. It was a smile of exceptional sweetness; Marigold possessed neither jealousy nor malice.
Anna said, "That's not action, that's postponement of action. Did he say anything else? Try to remember!"
Obediently Marigold racked her mind. "Nooo… that was all."
"Then keep me informed of your next visit to him," Anna ordered, and swept out of the room.
Catherine muttered, "That one will be having to haunt somebody herself, someday. To study humility."
"Oh, never mind her," Elizabeth said. "Tell us again about the ghost, Mar!"
Obligingly Marigold described yet again the terrible armless figure in the long red robe, while the Third Bedchamber shivered and squealed.
After six hours of scrolls and spells so intense that my head hurt, I knew much more about First Dame Cecilie than she would have liked me to know. Or anyone else, either. I poured myself an ale, watched the glory the sinking sun made of my small stained-glass window, and pondered amid the litter of my small library.
First Dame Cecilie had been born into an undistinguished yeoman family-Marigold's family-in West Riding, forty-seven years ago. She had been tested in the usual way at her woman-ceremony, and, astonishingly, had proved to have ability in knighthood, lore, war counsel, and barter. Only at childlove and housewifery had she scored low. Several castles had made her a bid, and her proud parents had chosen knighthood at Castle Treffin, very ivy-rank. Cecilie had easily become first bed in the First Bedchamber, and at class knighting she'd won every honor open to her. She'd left Treffin to join Princess Margaret's army, then invading the Sixth Kingdom, and distinguished herself in several battles. She'd married a beautiful and wealthy landowner, Duke Michael of Kern, and had done such a superb job of reorganizing and leading his household forces that no one had dared challenge the duke's army.
That had apparently been the problem.
Cecilie had had nothing more to do. There was no war to fight. She'd borne Michael twins, beautiful daughters, but she had no talent for housewifery or childlove, and her daughters did not fill her days. The house steward, a woman just as formidable as Cecilie, successfully resisted Cecilie's efforts to take over the household barter. Cecilie grew more idle, more bitter, and more desperate. Michael did not understand. They got separate bedchambers.