Robin Hobb - The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy - Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade’s Magic

‘Oh, I should have showed you our sitting room earlier, while there was still daylight!’ Epiny exclaimed in sudden disappointment. ‘You can’t see our new glass curtains at all properly at night!’ Despite this announcement, she went to a corner and drew the white curtains back with a pulley arrangement. Between the night and us a threaded fabric of tiny glass beads hung on thin filaments of wire. ‘When the sun shines, you can see that there is an entire landscape there worked in beads. Tomorrow, perhaps you can see it better,’ she announced, and swept the white curtains across once more.

Spink and I were still standing, for the room lacked chairs of any kind. My uncle folded his long legs to sink down on one of the immense cushions that littered the carpeted floor. Purissa was already sprawled on one, and Epiny returned to likewise ensconce herself on one. ‘Do sit down,’ she directed us as she produced a brown wooden game box from a drawer in a low table. ‘My mother has followed the Queen’s example in furnishing our sitting room. Our queen has been quite taken with Sebanese décor of late. After a court dinner, she retires with all her favourites to her own lounging room. Just sit down anywhere around the table and be comfortable.’

Both Spink and I settled uneasily. Our trousers had not been tailored for this sort of sitting, nor did our boots allow much bend to the ankles, but we managed. Epiny was setting out a game with brightly coloured cards and ceramic chips and an enamelled board. She seemed to delight in the musical clacking of the pieces as she arranged it all.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know this game,’ Spink said sociably as she assigned a colour to each of us.

‘Oh, never fear on that account. All too soon, you will know it too well,’ my uncle predicted with a wry grin.

‘It is such fun, and terribly easy to learn,’ Epiny assured him earnestly.

Such proved to be the case. For all its shiny and elegant pieces, the game was idiotically simple. It involved matching colours and symbols, and calling out different words if one had a red match or a blue match and so on. Both girls were constantly leaping to their feet and doing little dances of triumph when they secured winning pairs of cards. I rapidly tired of leaping to my feet to declare that I’d scored a point. Epiny insisted it was a rule and that I must comply. For the first time, my uncle interfered with her wilfulness, and announced that neither Spink nor I nor he would leap up, but would merely raise a hand. Epiny pouted about this for a time, but the dreary little game proceeded anyway. Is there anything more tedious than a pointless pastime?

Uncle Sefert managed to escape with the excuse that little Purissa was not allowed to stay up late. Her nanny had come to the door to find her, and surely he could have sent the child off with her. I think he insisted on accompanying them simply to escape the dreadful game.

With two players gone, the game proceeded even more rapidly, for the element of uncertainty as to who held what markers was greatly reduced. We played two more rounds of it, with Spink courteously pretending to enjoy himself before I could stand it no longer. ‘Enough!’ I said, throwing my hands up in mock surrender. I tried to smile as I added, ‘Your game has exhausted me, Epiny. Shall we take a brief recess?’

‘You tire too easily. What sort of a cavalla officer will you be when you cannot stand up to the demands of a simple game?’ she asked me tartly. Smiling, she turned to Spink. ‘You are not weary yet, are you?’ she asked him.

He smiled back. ‘I could play another hand or two.’

‘Excellent. Then we shall!’

I had expected Spink to side with me. Deprived of my ally, I conceded and we played another three hands. Midway through our second hand, my uncle looked in on us. Epiny immediately and enthusiastically welcomed him back to the game, but he firmly declined, saying he had some reading to do. Before he retired to that, he reminded us that the next day was the Sixday, and that we should all get to bed early enough that we could easily rise for the daylight services he always attended.

‘We’re just going to do a few more hands,’ Epiny assured him to my dismay, for I was very willing to retire from her and her game and seek a good night’s rest. My uncle left and we finished yet another round of the tedious game. Then, as Epiny gathered the markers to set them up afresh she asked us, ‘Has either of you ever been part of a séance?’

‘A science?’ Spink was puzzled, then helpfully offered, ‘Nevare appears to enjoy geology as a hobby.’

‘No. Not a science.’ Epiny continued to set up the playing pieces for the game. She was sending us only furtive glances, gauging our reactions from under her eyelashes. ‘A séance . A summoning of spirits, often through a medium. Like me.’

‘A medium what?’ I asked her. She laughed aloud.

‘I am a medium. Or so I believe, for so the Queen’s medium said to me the last time I attended a séance at my mother’s side. I’ve only begun to explore my talent in the last four months. A medium is someone with the power to invite spirits to speak through her body. Sometimes the spirits are the ghosts of those who have died, but who earnestly wish to convey some final bit of information to the living. Sometimes the spirits appear to be elder beings, perhaps even the remnants of the old gods who were worshipped before the good god came to free us from that darkness. And sometimes …’

‘Oh. Those. I’ve heard some talk about them. People sitting in a circle in the dark, holding hands and playing at bogey-frights on one another. It sounds unholy, and completely unfit for a girl to be interested in,’ I told her sternly. In my heart, I was full of curiosity and longing to hear more, but I did not wish to tempt my own cousin to corruption.

‘Indeed?’ She gave me a disdainful look. ‘Perhaps you ought to tell that to my mother, for tonight she assists the Queen at her weekly séance session. Or perhaps the Queen herself would like to hear your notions of what is “unholy and unfit for girls”.’ She turned to Spink. ‘The Queen says that much of what is judged “unfit for women to pursue” are the very sciences and disciplines that lead to power. What do you think of that?’

Spink glanced at me but I had no help for him. It struck me as an entirely peculiar conversation, not unlike Epiny herself. He took a breath, and the expression on his face was the same one he wore when an instructor called on him in class. ‘I have not had much time to reflect on that, but on the surface, it would certainly seem true. Women are not encouraged to study the exact sciences or engineering. The complete texts of the Holy Writ are forbidden to them; they only study the writings given specifically for women. The arts and sciences of war are judged unfit … if those be the paths to power, then, yes, perhaps women are denied those paths when they are denied those disciplines.’

‘Why should it matter?’ I spread my hands. ‘If there are disciplines that are unfit for girls, then it is only natural that those disciplines would lead to inappropriate ends. Why would any father put his daughter on a path that can only lead her to unhappiness and frustration?’

Epiny swivelled her gaze to me. ‘Why would a powerful woman be unhappy and frustrated?’

‘Because she wouldn’t, well, a powerful woman, would not, have, well, a home and family and children. She wouldn’t have time for all the things that fulfil a woman.’

‘Powerful men have those things.’

‘Because they have wives,’ I pointed out to her.

‘Exactly,’ she said, as if she had just proven something.

I shook my head at her. ‘I’m going to bed.’