Robin Hobb - Renegade's Magic

I shook my head. “I’ll tell it all when both you and Spink can hear it.” In truth, I wanted to put off that reckoning a little while. Surely my cousin would no longer look at me so fondly once she had heard of my part in the raid. “Instead, you must finish telling me what has been going on here. You were starving?”

She nodded. Her eyes grew larger and her face paled. “The Speck raid destroyed all the food stored in the warehouses. People were left with only what they’d had in their homes, and the men in the barracks had even less. They salvaged what meat they could from the horses that had died in the fires, and tore apart the burned wreckage looking for anything, half a sack of flour or a scorched bag of grain. Anything. A few people had chickens that they were wintering over, but with their feed gone or eaten by people, there was no sense in holding back. So we ate all the chickens, what milk goats there were, the hogs—it was terrible, Nevare. It was like we were eating our hopes for the future. There is still hardly any livestock left in town, and half our troops are afoot. Those last weeks, there was next to nothing. I soaked out a molasses keg and then gave the children warmed molasses water. We had no hope at all.”

Despite the gravity of the tale, I had to grin. “And then Sergeant Duril arrived,” I filled in.

She cocked her head, a trifle surprised perhaps. “That he did. To save the day. I don’t know how that old man got through; the sides of his cart were muddy and his horses were next to dead. Oh, it was like a blessing from heaven to see that cartload of goods: flour, sugar, beans, peas, molasses, oil—everything we’d been longing for. I felt as rich as a queen when he knocked on my door and said, ‘Miz Epiny Kester? Your family has sent you some help!’

“But it wasn’t five minutes before every woman in town was standing in the street outside my house, staring at that food. Some of their little children were weeping and begging for a taste, and some were too starved to even do that. And Spink came out and sent them all home to get bowls and cups, so we could measure out shares for all, as far as it would go. I can’t tell you how I hated him, for all of half a moment! There we were, with our own little baby down to skin and bones, and he was giving our food away! But I knew he was right. How would I ever have faced any of them, if I had kept plenty of food for my own and let their children go empty?”

“Not to mention that they might have turned on you and simply taken it all, if shares hadn’t been freely offered.”

Epiny sighed. “Nevare, I never cease to be amazed at the darkness of your thoughts! How can you bear to think such evil things about people?”

“I think my life experience has had something to do with it.”

“Oh, such a sour outlook! But that isn’t what happened at all. We shared what we had, and just as we were down to thinking of making soup from the flour sack, the supply wagons came.”

A worry came to me. “What did you tell Duril when he was here? About me, I mean.”

She looked at me sadly. “Nevare, what do you think I told him? What did I owe a good man like that, who has risked all for us? I told him the truth.”

I lowered my eyes before her disapproval.

“Why did you think I would do anything else?” She scolded me. “He told me that he knew something of what had happened to you already, and that he was with you the night you confronted Dewara. He may not be an educated man, Nevare, and perhaps being a sergeant was the highest he ever rose in his life, but he has a lot of wisdom and common sense. It wasn’t easy for him to hear. But at the end of it, he nodded, and said he hoped you were still alive and might come home to give some comfort to your father. But even if you never came back, he said, ‘I won’t never think badly of him. I did my task the best I could, taught him all I knew about soldiering. If he sticks to that, he shouldn’t do too badly.’”

I had to ask the next question. “Did you tell him about the raid on Gettys? Does he know about my part in it?”

“Nevare, I don’t fully understand your part in it, so I could scarcely tell him. I was so drugged with laudanum, I can barely remember that night. I think I’m glad of that. You’ve said it wasn’t really you. I believe that. Why shouldn’t I believe that?”

I looked at my feet. “Perhaps because I’ve deceived you before.”

“Yes, you have,” she freely admitted. “And it still rankles. But I think we need to move past it, at least for today. You’ve had a very hard time, Nevare, but now you are home. And perhaps you have had nothing but bad news and hard times and sad tidings for too long. So. Let me share some good news with you.” Her smile suddenly widened. “Have you any idea how your family’s fortune has changed of late?”

“I’ve a hint of it. There was a gold strike near my father’s holdings.”

“Yes, but it’s so much more than that. I had a letter from your sister just a few days ago. Would you like to read it yourself, or shall I just tell you?”

“Do you have it with you?” I longed to touch paper my sister had touched, to see words written in her hand.

“I’m afraid I was a bit more flustered than that when I packed up my baby and ran out of my house! If I’d been thinking, I’d have brought it and a picnic basket! Do you want to wait until you finally visit my home?”

She was baiting me again. I shook my head with a smile and said, “Just tell me how Yaril fares.”

“Well, your sister has been absolutely brilliant for one so young. She said there was a day in your father’s study when he was not feeling well. And when she went to him, she herself nearly fainted. But as she fell, she saw you standing over her. She said that you showed her a place and told her that was where an important rock came from. As soon as Sergeant Duril returned, she made him take her out riding. From what she says, it was quite a trip, requiring them to camp overnight twice! But she found the place and it was the Sergeant who recognized the rocks for what they were: gold ore. I’ve no idea how he knew that’s what it was, but he did. And she was clever enough to know that it wasn’t on your father’s holdings, and that if she told others about it, there would be no gain to your family, just a wild rush of greedy people trying to get what they could. So they spoke not a word to anyone. She sent the samples to the Queen quietly, suggesting that as all the lands there are the Crown’s, the monarchs would wish to know the value of what was there before unscrupulous men began to secretly mine it or they unknowingly gave it away in a land grant.” She grinned at me. “You’ll never guess who her courier was.”

I knew. I’d told Yaril she could trust him. “Sergeant Duril,” I said confidently.

She laughed delightedly. “No. You are not even close. Though the sergeant is a dear, dear man, and if ever I needed a trusty courier or a tutor for my son or someone to look after my holdings, I would definitely consider him a good choice.”

“Who, then?” I demanded impatiently.

She picked up her baby, kissed the little girl with a flourish, and then announced to me, “Caulder Stiet. There. What do you think of that?”

For a moment my mouth hung open. Then I replied darkly, “I fear she has played right into his hands.”

“Then you would be mistaken,” Epiny told me snippily. “For it was a conspiracy between the two of them, to get the samples to the Queen without letting Caulder’s uncle know that they had obtained them.”

“What?”

“Yaril saw it as a chance for them to build something, for themselves, perhaps together, perhaps not. They are both, she wrote, tired of being pawns in their elders’ games. Caulder is quite certain he wishes to marry her, but she has honestly told him that she is uncertain and does not wish to be married for many years yet. Still, they are friends enough to conspire. She and Caulder feigned a monstrous quarrel, with shrieking and broken crockery! You know, from the way she writes of it, I think she enjoyed it! She mentions she smashed enough cups from the old china that her father will have to let her buy a whole new set now.”