Forest Mage

TWO

Homeward Bound

My departure from the Academy was neither as swift nor as simple as I had hoped. When I went by the commander’s office to inform him that I had my ticket and was ready to leave, he charged me to be sure I had informed each of my instructors and taken down notes of what assignments I should complete before my return. I had not reckoned on that, but had hoped for freedom from my books for a time. It took me the best part of a day to gather them up, for I dared not interrupt any classes. Then my packing was more complicated than I had planned, for I had to take my books, and yet still travel light enough that all my provisions would fit in Sirlofty’s saddle panniers.

It was some months since the tall gelding had had to carry anything besides me, and he seemed a bit sulky when I loaded the panniers on him as well. In truth, I was as little pleased as he was. I was proud of my sharp uniform and fine horse; it seemed a shame to ride him through Old Thares laden as if he were a mule and I some rustic farmer taking a load of potatoes to market. I tried to stifle my annoyance at it for I knew that half of it was vanity. I tightened my saddle cinch, signed the ancient ‘hold fast’ charm over the buckle and mounted my horse.

My ticket told me that my jank would sail the following evening. There was no real need of haste, yet I wanted to be well aboard and settled before the lines were cast off. I went first to my uncle’s home to bid him farewell, and also to see if he had any messages for my father. He came down immediately to meet me, and invited me up to his den. He did all he could to make me feel welcome, and yet there was still some stiffness between us. He looked older than he had when first I met him, and I suspected that his wife Daraleen had not warmed towards him since Epiny’s wild act of defiance. Epiny had left their home in the midst of the plague to hurry to Spink’s side and tend him. It was a scandalous thing for a woman of her age and position to have done, and it completely destroyed all prospects of her marriage to a son of the older noble houses.

Epiny herself had been well aware of that, of course. She had deliberately ruined herself, so that her mother would have no options but to accept Spink and his family’s bid for her hand. The prospect of a marriage connection with a new noble family, one with no established estates but only raw holdings on the edge of the borderlands, had filled Daraleen with both chagrin and horror. Epiny’s tactic had been ruthless, one that put her fate into her own hands, but also severed the bond between mother and daughter. I had heard Epiny’s artless little sister Purissa say that she was now her mother’s best daughter and jewel for the future. I was certain she was only repeating words she’d heard from her mother’s lips.

So when my uncle invited me to sit while he rang for a servant to bring up a light repast for us, I remained standing and said that I needed to be sure of being on time for my boat’s departure. A sour smile wrinkled his mouth.

‘Nevare. Do you forget that I purchased that ticket at your father’s behest? You have plenty of time to make your boat’s sailing. The only thing you have to worry about is stopping at the bank to cash your cheque and get some travelling funds. Please. Sit down.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, and sat.

He rang for a servant, spoke to him briefly, and then took his own seat with a sigh. He looked at me and shook his head. ‘You act as if we are angry with one another. Or as if I should be angry with you.’

I looked down before his gaze. ‘You’d have every right to be, sir. I’m the one who brought Spink here. If I hadn’t introduced him to Epiny, none of this would ever have happened.’

He gave a brief snort of laughter. ‘No. Doubtless something else, equally awkward, would have happened instead. Nevare, you forget that Epiny is my daughter. I’ve known her all her life, and even if I didn’t quite realize all she was capable of, I nevertheless knew that she had an inquiring mind, an indomitable spirit, and the will to carry out any plan she conceived. Her mother might hold you accountable, but then, Epiny’s mother is fond of holding people accountable for things beyond their control. I try not to do that.’

He sounded tired and sad, and despite my guilt, or perhaps because of it, my heart went out to him. He had treated me well, almost as if I were his own son. Despite my father’s elevation to noble status, he and his elder brother had remained close. I knew that was not true of many families, where old noble heir sons regarded their ‘battle lord’ younger brothers as rivals. Spink’s ‘old noble’ relatives had no contact with him, and had turned a blind eye to the needs of his widowed mother. Certainly a great deal of my aunt’s distaste for me was that she perceived my father as an upstart, a new noble who should have remained a simple military officer. Many of the old nobility felt that King Troven had elevated his ‘battle lords’ as a political tactic, so that he might seed the Council of Lords with recently elevated aristocrats who had a higher degree of loyalty to him and greater sympathy for his drive to expand Gernia to the east by military conquest. Possibly, they were right. I settled back in my chair and tried to smile at my uncle. ‘I still feel responsible,’ I said quietly.

‘Yes, well, you are the sort of man who would. Let it go, Nevare. If I recall correctly, you did not first invite Spink to my home. Epiny did, when she saw him standing beside you at the Academy that day we came to pick you up. Who knows? Perhaps that was the instant in which she decided to marry him. I would not put it beyond her. And now, since we are discussing her and Spinrek, would you tell me if you’ve heard anything from your friend? I long to know how my wayward daughter fares.’

‘She has not written to you?’ I asked, shocked.

‘Not a word,’ he said sadly. ‘I thought we had parted on, well, if not on good terms, at least with the understanding that I still loved her, even if I could not agree with all her decisions. But since the day she departed from my doorstep, I’ve heard nothing, from her or Spinrek.’ His voice was steady and calm as he spoke, but the hollowness he felt came through all the same. I felt an instant spurt of anger towards Epiny. Why was she treating her father so coldly? ‘I have received letters not just from Spink, but also from Epiny. I will be happy to share them with you, sir. I have them with me, among my books and other papers in Sirlofty’s pack.’

Hope lit in his eyes, but he said, ‘Nevare, I couldn’t ask you to betray any confidences Epiny has made to you. If you would just tell me that she is well …’

‘Nonsense!’ Then I remembered to whom I spoke. ‘Uncle Sefert, Epiny has written me pages and pages, a veritable journal since the day she left your door. I have read nothing there that I’d hesitate to tell you, so why should you not read her words for yourself? Let me fetch them. It will only take a moment.’

I saw him hesitate, but he could not resist, and at his nod I hastened down the stairs. I took the packet of letters from Sirlofty’s panniers and hurried back up with them. By then, a tempting luncheon had been set out for us in the den. I ate most of it, in near silence, for my uncle could not resist his impulse to begin immediately on Epiny’s letters. It was like watching a plant revived by a rainfall after a drought to watch him first smile and then chuckle over her descriptions of her adventures. As he carefully folded the last page of the most recent missive, he looked up at me. ‘I think she is finding life as a frontier wife rather different from what she supposed it to be.’

‘I cannot imagine a greater change in living conditions than leaving your family home here in Old Thares for a poor cottage in Bitter Springs.’

He replied with grim satisfaction in his voice, ‘And yet she does not complain. She does not threaten to run back home to me, nor does she whimper that she deserves better. She accepts the future that she made for herself. I am proud of her for that. Her life, indeed, is not what I would have chosen for her. I would never have believed that my flighty, childish daughter would have the strength to confront such things. And yet she has, and she flourishes.’

I myself thought that ‘flourish’ was far too strong a word to apply to what Epiny was doing, but I held my tongue. Uncle Sefert loved his unruly daughter. If he took pride in her ability to deal with harsh conditions, I would not take that from him.

I was willing to leave Epiny’s letters with him, but he insisted I take them back. Privately, I resolved to rebuke her for making her father suffer so; what had he done to deserve such treatment? He’d given her far more freedom than most girls of her age enjoyed, and she’d used it to arrange a marriage to her own liking. Even after she had publicly disgraced herself by fleeing his house and going to Spink’s sickbed, my uncle had not disowned her, but had given her a modest wedding and a nice send-off. What more did she expect of the man?

As I bade my uncle farewell, he gave me a letter to my father and some small gifts to send to my mother and sisters and I managed to find room for them in my panniers. I made a brief stop at my father’s banker in Old Thares to change my cheque into banknotes, and then went immediately down to the docks. My ship was already loading, and I was glad I had arrived with some time to spare, for Sirlofty received the last decent box stall on board the vessel. My own cabin, though very small, was comfortable and I was glad to settle into it.

My upriver passage on the jankship was not nearly as exciting as our flight downriver had been the previous fall. The current was against us, and though it was not yet in full spring flood, it was still formidable. The vessel used not only oarsmen, but also a method of propulsion called cordelling, in which a small boat rowed upstream with a line threaded through a bridle and made fast to the mast. Once the small boat had tied the free end of the line to a fixed object such as a large tree, the line was reeled in on a capstan on the jankship. While we were reeling in the first line, a second towline was already being set in place, and in this way, we moved upriver between six and fifteen miles a day. An upstream journey on one of the big passenger janks was more stately than swift, and more like spending time at an elegant resort than simple travel.

Perhaps my father had intended that part of the journey to be a treat for me, and an opportunity to mingle socially. Instead, I chafed and wondered if I would not have made better time on Sirlofty’s back. Although the jankship offered all sorts of amusements and edification, from games of chance to poetry readings, I did not enjoy it as I had the first time I’d taken ship with my father. The people on board the vessel seemed less congenial than the passengers my father and I had met on our previous journey. The young ladies were especially haughty, their superciliousness bordering on plain rudeness. Once, thinking only to be a gentleman, I bent down to retrieve a pen that had fallen from one young lady’s table by her deck chair. As I did so, one of my ill-sewn buttons popped from my jacket and went rolling off across the deck. She and her friend burst out laughing at me, the one pointing rudely at my rolling button while the other all but stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth to try to conceal her merriment. She did not even thank me for the pen that I handed back to her, but continued to giggle and indeed to snort as I left her side and went in pursuit of my wayward button. Once I had reclaimed it, I turned back to them, thinking that they might wish to be more social, but as I approached them they hastily rose, gathered all their items and swept away in a flurry of skirts and fans.

Later that day, I heard giggling behind me. A female voice said, ‘Never have I seen so rotund a cadet!’ and a male voice replied, ‘Hush! Can’t you tell he’s with child! Don’t mock a future mother!’ I turned and looked up to find the two ladies and a couple of young men standing on an upper deck and looking down at me. They immediately looked away, but one fellow was unable to control the great ‘haw’ of laughter that burst from him. I felt the blood rush to my face, for I was both infuriated and embarrassed that my weight was a cause of so much amusement.

I went immediately back to my stateroom, and attempted to survey myself in the tiny mirror there. It was inadequate to the task, as I could only see about one eighth of myself at a time. I decided that they had been amused by how tight my uniform jacket had become on me. Truly, it had grown snug, and every time I donned it after that, I feared that I cut a comical figure in it. It quite spoiled the rest of the voyage for me, for whenever I attended one of the musical events or cultural lectures, I felt sure that the ladies were somewhere in the audience, staring at me. I did catch glimpses of them, from time to time, often with the same young gentlemen. They all seemed comfortable staring at me while avoiding my company. My annoyance with them grew daily, as did my self-consciousness.

Matters came to a head one evening when I was descending the stairs from one deck to the next. The stairs were spiralled to save space, and quite tightly engineered. My height as well as my new weight made them a bit tricky for me. I had discovered that as long as I kept my elbows in and trusted my feet to find their footing without attempting to look down, I could navigate them smoothly. Even for a slender passenger, the stairs did not allow users to pass one another. Thus as I descended, a small group of my fellows were waiting at the bottom of the steps for me to clear the way for them.

They did not trouble to lower their voices. ‘Beware below!’ one fellow declared loudly as I trod the risers. I recognized his voice as the same one that had declared me pregnant. My blood began to boil.

I heard a woman’s shrill and nervous giggle, followed by another male voice adding, ‘Ye gads, what is it? It’s blocking the sun! Does it wedge? No sir, it does not! Stand clear, stand clear.’ I recognized that he was imitating the stentorian tones of the sailor who took the depth readings with a lead line and shouted them back to the captain.

‘Barry! Stop it!’ a girl hissed at him, but the suppressed merriment in her voice was encouragement, not condemnation.

‘Oh, the suspense! Will he make it or will he run aground?’ the young man queried enthusiastically.

I emerged at that point from the stairwell. My cheeks were red but not with exertion. There I encountered the familiar foursome, in evening dress. One girl, still giggling, rushed past me and up the steps, her little slippers tapping hastily up the stairs and the skirts of her yellow gown brushing the sides of the stair as she went. Her tall male companion moved to follow her. I stepped in front of him. ‘Were you mocking me?’ I asked him in a level, amiable voice. I cannot say where my control came from, for inside, I was seething. Anger bubbled through my blood.