L. Modesitt - Cyador’s Heirs

“It’s highly prized, but no one in Hamor knows how it was created. We do … or rather my husband does, and it’s taken years to build up enough silk moths, but we can’t raise any more without more fresh leaves to feed the larvae.”

“You’re growing shimmercloth?”

Altyrn shook his head. “It’s not quite the same, but the threads and fabric are much the same. The silk moths are different here, and it took years to get white mulberry seeds from Candar.”

Lerial cannot say that he understands, but he decides against revealing more ignorance immediately. Instead, he looks at the platter and bowl before him. The bowl contains a grayish porridge of sorts that looks to have raisins mixed into it. On the platter is a piece of browned egg toast, with a slice of hard yellow cheese on the side and a strip of fried meat that might be ham. In his mug is some sort of liquid.

“There’s raisin-berry syrup in the pitcher,” Aylana advises him. “It’s good on the egg toast. Don’t hog it.”

Lerial can’t help but smile slightly at the words of the youngest girl, reminding him slightly of his own sister. “Thank you. I won’t.”

Since everyone else has already started to eat, Lerial does not hesitate … or not much. The porridge is better than it looks, and the combination of egg toast and syrup actually tastes good. The cheese is far stronger than he imagined cheese could be, and he has no idea what the meat might be, except that it is strong … and it’s not mutton, beef, or ham. He decides not to ask. The greenish liquid in his mug turns out to be a type of greenberry juice he’s never tasted, almost too tart for his taste at first, but it does go with the breakfast in a way he cannot explain.

When he finishes his last bite of the porridge, Maeroja hands him a small jar. “Put some on your face and neck, evenly and all over. Otherwise your skin will burn and blister. Especially yours.”

Lerial takes the jar.

After returning to his chamber and slathering his face and neck, Lerial makes his way down to the main level, where Rojana and Altyrn wait for him. He and Rojana walk side by side behind Altyrn, out through the center courtyard and then through the corridor on the west side of the villa out across the paved area toward the outbuildings.

Rojana, who carries an oddly shaped piece of wood, points to the brick shedlike building ahead that appears to have a white awning suspended above the tile roof. “That’s the cocoonery.”

“The what?”

“Where the silkworm eggs hatch. It can’t be too hot or too cool. That’s why they hatch and are fed during the spring and the early summer. Even with the awning it gets too hot after that. Then the cocoons have to be boiled…”

“But who does all this?”

“Tyrna and Aylana are good at teasing out the silk strands, and Father pays some of the local girls to help. We’ll have to get more when we build another cocoonery.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“Shimmercloth is worth twice its weight in gold. That’s what Father says.”

Lerial swallows, as all the pieces come together and he realizes what the venture his father had mentioned the night before had been … and that Kiedron had been talking about a hundred golds for a stone’s worth of shimmercloth. No wonder no one in Cigoerne wears anything made of it. “I haven’t seen any here…”

“We need the golds more than the cloth.”

So does my father. The realization strikes Lerial almost like a blow as he realizes that, except for the two shimmercloth items belonging to his grandmother, he has never seen any around the Palace.

The majer stops outside a small building that Lerial hasn’t even seen initially. “Wait here.”

Lerial waits, but only for a few moments before the majer reemerges with two spades. He hands the one with the longer shaft to Lerial, the shorter to Rojana, then gestures to the southwest. “You and Rojana are to dig a section of ditch, just past the stone marker at the corner of the pasture. Where you start is marked out with yarn, and there’s another strand that marks the line you take. She has the gauge for how deep and wide the ditch is to be. I’ll be working with the men lining the ditches with clay.”

Dirt isn’t dirt? He waits to ask until he and Rojana are well away from the majer. “What’s special about the clay? I mean, different from the dirt?”

“Clay is what you make bricks of. You can line ditches and ponds with it so that water doesn’t seep out. The dirt here has too much sand in it, and lots of water would seep away if we didn’t use clay.”

“Digging isn’t something I think of women doing,” Lerial says as they near the stone marker.

“Why not?”

“I … I just don’t think of it that way.”

“You don’t think women have to work?”

“It’s not that. My aunt and my mother work. They’re both healers, and they go to the healers’ hall every day. My aunt works hard at it. Sometimes … sometimes…”

“Sometimes what?”

“I don’t know that most people could do what she does. She has to help broken arms and legs heal, and sometimes she has to watch people die.”

“Is that what she says?”

“No. I’ve seen it happen.”

“You were in the healers’ hall?”

“Just a few times.” Lerial doesn’t want to admit he’d only been once.

“Can you heal?”

“My father says I should be able to once I learn how to handle a sabre better.”

“That’s stupid. Learn how to kill better so that you can heal.”

“It’s not that. I’m of the Magi’i, and my tutor says I have to learn how to handle chaos first before I work with order.”

“He’s stupid, too.” Rojana actually snorts.

“There’s the yarn marker.” Lerial points, not wanting to admit he has always had doubts about Saltaryn.

When they get closer, he wonders why the beginning marker was needed, since the section of ditch already dug ends abruptly right there. A single dirty white strand runs straight west, although Lerial can only see it for perhaps twenty yards before it is lost in the sparse green and brown grass.

“You dig out the grass,” says Rojana. “I’ll shape the sides and bottoms behind you.”

“I can do that.” Lerial lifts the spade and attacks the grass.

By midmorning, he is no longer stiff, but his arms both burn and ache. To cut through the grass roots at times requires him to put his boots on the edge of the iron spade, and the balls of his feet are beginning to ache as well.

He stops for a moment and asks. “What do you graze on the front pastures?”

“Goats.”

“I didn’t see any.”

“You can’t let them graze too long. They’ll rip up the grass roots. Father doesn’t like goats.”

“Why goats and not sheep?”

“The sheep don’t do well here.” Rojana lifts another spadeful of earth out of the bottom of the ditch lays it on the ground, then takes the wooden gauge and places it in the ditch. Her lips tighten as she sets aside the gauge and lifts the spade again, shaving a digit’s worth of earth from the bottom of the ditch. “You need to keep digging. I’ve almost caught up with you.”

Lerial looks back across the field to where Altyrn is working with two men and an older woman. One man shovels clay from a handcart into the unfinished ditch while another uses a long-handled tamper with a flat bottom to tamp it into place. Altyrn measures and adjusts the depth with a small sharp spade. The woman sprinkles a dark liquid over the tamped clay and smooths the surface.

“How far do we have to dig?” Lerial asks tiredly.

“To the end of the yarn. It’s just even with the stone field marker.”