Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“Mistress Cheven.” Guinalle ushered the red-faced matron into a side aisle where withy screens separated bays into an illusion of privacy. I favoured the inquisitive women with a sunny smile while Halice leaned on the doorpost, dour faced, prompting most to tend their steeping jars and tincture bottles.

“One of those filth—” Catrice’s mother struggled for words to express her contempt, accents of Toremal strengthened by emotion and echoing round the stone walls. “He calls my girl a slut, says she lays with any who asks, claiming her babe as his.” Fury choked her to silence before abruptly deserting her, leaving her plump face slack with the threat of tears.

“Calm yourself.” Guinalle looked past Mistress Cheven as she pressed the woman to take a stool. “Corps Commander Halice is here and I imagine about the same business.” She beckoned to us with unconscious authority.

Halice walked over unhurried, me a pace behind. “Mistress Cheven, Demoiselle Tor Priminale.” She bowed and Guinalle sketched a perfunctory curtsey out of archaic habit. “I came to warn you about Peyt right enough. He’s out to make trouble for Deglain and slandering Catrice was the best thing he could think of. There was a fight—” Halice raised a hand to soothe Mistress Cheven’s inarticulate distress. “Peyt came off second best and he’ll feel the sharp edge of my tongue as well as due punishment. It was Deg I wanted to talk to you about, Demoiselle.” She looked at Guinalle. “Back in Lescar, hired as a corps, I’d have him flogged for messing with a girl, if she was unwilling. If she was willing but found with child, I’d pay him off and promise him all the torments of Poldrion’s demons if I ever found he’d abandoned them. But I’d still be calling him to account for throwing the first punch in a brawl.”

“But this is not Lescar,” Guinalle concluded Halice’s unspoken thought.

“Deglain’s a good man, not one to fight unless sore provoked.” Mistress Cheven looked concerned. “Me and her father, we’re glad to see Catrice keep company with him. They’ve been talking about wedding this Solstice coming. Back when, that is, if we still held to old customs, they’d be handfasted long since.”

“Deglain’s been working as a tinsmith since before the turn of the year,” Halice pointed out. “Does he come under my jurisdiction these days? I wouldn’t argue for it.”

Guinalle sat on a stool herself. “No, I don’t suppose he does.”

“I don’t want Peyt to sniff an excuse to go stirring up any bad feeling between mercenaries and colonists. This seems as good a time as any to agree a few rules about exactly where D’Alsennin’s writ runs and where my authority holds.” Halice studied Guinalle’s heart-shaped face before turning to Mistress Cheven with firm assertion. “But Peyt definitely comes under my lash and I’ll see it bites him. He won’t sully Catrice’s name again.”

“That answers your complaint, doesn’t it?” Guinalle brushed absently at the chestnut braids coiled high on her head and I noticed green stains on the ladylike softness of her small hands, grime beneath her precisely pared nails.

The habit of obedience to anyone noble born prompted the older woman to stand. “I suppose so.”

“Send Catrice to see me,” Guinalle smiled reassurance. “I can see how far along the babe is.”

“That would be a kindness, Demoiselle.” Mistress Cheven looked relieved. “It being her first—well, there are things a girl won’t ask her mother.” She glanced at Halice and me, colouring as she curtseyed a farewell to Guinalle.

“Didn’t women ever wear breeches in the Old Empire?” I watched her go with amusement.

“Not that I’m aware,” replied Guinalle with a smile too brief to reach her hazel eyes.

“Can Artifice tell you if Deg truly is the father?” Halice asked bluntly.

“I might get some sense of it.” Guinalle hesitated. “Does it matter, if he loves Catrice and acknowledges the child?”

“I’d like to be forewarned, if it’ll come out wearing Peyt’s nose.” Halice looked stern. “I’ll ship him back across the ocean before Catrice’s due season for a start.”

“Which will almost certainly be For-Autumn.” Guinalle’s unguarded face showed an instant of weariness. “Another one. Drianon only knows where we’re going to find enough Bluemantle.” She looked at the long table where her women were still diligently sorting herbs between whispered comments and snatched glances in our direction. “I wonder how anything got done over the winter, there are so many babes expected between hay and harvest.”

I couldn’t decide if Guinalle sounded disapproving or envious. No matter, midwifery was none of my business and I’d make doubly sure of that with a little herb gathering of my own, as soon as Halcarion’s Vine came into bloom on this side of the ocean.

Halice had other concerns as well. “We need D’Alsennin—” She broke off as two men with belligerent expressions hurried into the hall and hailed Guinalle.

“Demoiselle—”

“My lady—”

One was a colonist I vaguely recognised; the other a craftsman come over the previous year after D’Alsennin had taken ship to Toremal to settle a few matters with Emperor Tadriol and start recruiting new blood and necessary skills.

“It’s the piglets,” one began.

“I’ll pay with a share when it’s killed,” protested the other.

His Tormalin lilt was already coloured with the ancient intonations and mongrel mercenary accents that were blending into Kellarin’s speech.

“There’s ten in the litter,” the first man appealed to Guinalle. “Me and the wife can’t eat that much sausage! We need firewood. He’s got it stacked up to the eaves—”

“And I sweated for every axe stroke,” protested the craftsman. “And Estle’s boar did the work on your sow, not you!”

“I was talking with the demoiselle.” There was an ominous edge to Halice’s voice and both men took a pace back.

The colonist twisted his cap awkwardly in square hands. “Beg pardon, Mis—” He swallowed the word ’Mistress’ as Halice glared at him.

“If you want D’Alsennin to extend his authority over Deglain, Corps Commander, take it up with him.” Guinalle stood, smoothing the front of her plain gown. “I have more than enough to do here.”

“So I see.” Halice frowned and the men with the squabble took another step back but I didn’t think her anger was directed at them. “Have you any adepts trained to share your duties yet?”

Guinalle stiffened. “We’ve managed some study over the winter but time is limited with so much to do.”

“And it’s always quicker and easier to do things yourself rather than show someone else. Why risk them fouling it up?” Halice’s voice was firm but not unsympathetic. She looked down at Guinalle with a rare smile. “Which is all well and good but you need to let folk learn by their own mistakes.”

“It’s for me to judge how best to train practitioners of Artifice.” Guinalle’s chin came up, her expression one of frosty hauteur. “Haste is often at odds with wisdom, especially when we can ill afford even the most trivial errors. Good day to you.” Guinalle nodded a brusque farewell and swept back to her waiting women, leaving the men with the squabble looking blank.

Halice strode out of the hall and I followed, noting she was rubbing absently at the thigh she’d broken a couple of years back. Guinalle’s skills with the healing power of Artifice had saved Halice from life as a cripple and Halice was ever one to honour her debts, whether the noblewoman wanted her help or not.

“That girl needs to take a bit more time for herself and ask a lot more of other people. I can’t recall when we last talked without someone interrupting to ask her to judge a barter, solve a quarrel, or advise on some triviality.” Halice shot me a glare. “There wasn’t one of the adepts she’s supposedly training around that table.”