Part 14 (1/2)
”You are still upset, sorceress-woman. Would you care to tell me why?” Essan lifted a goblet of her apple brandy and sipped.
Anna swallowed, then began to speak. ”We are surrounded. Defalk is, I mean, and everyone except Ebra is plotting how to take us over. The Liedfuhr has sent lancers to Neserea. The Lord of Dumar is up to something. and so are those women in Wei and Ranuak, some of them anyway. We don't have enough coins for the year Anna spread her bands. ”Our roads are so much of a mess so that we can't move armsmen or messages or goods or anything very well, and I've got a handful of lords who don't even want to pay liedgeld-”
”Defalk has never been much different,” said the older woman. ”You think being a sorceress would change that?”
”No.” Anna almost laughed at Essan's dry tone.
”What bothers me is that everyone says just that, and nothing can be changed. If I can't change things, then Defalk will fall. I'm a sorceress, not a miracle worker.”
”Already you've worked miracles.” Essan lifted brandy goblet again, almost as in a toast. ”People expect more. Donjim, he put down a peasant uprising, then another. The second one happened because the lords thought that they could abuse the peasants and he would bring in his armsrnen and back them up.” The white haired woman took a solid swallow of the amber liquid. ”Those uprisings killed Senjim and broke Donjim's heart. I rode with them, on the first one, you know. Better they had killed me.”
”You're too tough for that,” Anna said.
”I was then. Not now. I sit in front of a fire, and look at you. This is a hard land, sorceress who looks like girl. A hard land with hard lords. Aye, hard lords and selfish ones.” She refilled the goblet. ”You must be hard too, Anna, or they will break you and your heart, just like they broke Donjim, and Barjim,' and Brill.”
”You must be hard” Was that what it took? To stronger and harder. . . perhaps more cruel? Anna shook her head.
”You say no, sorceress-woman, and that means, should you succeed, you'll end up being harder on yourself than on anyone.” Essan laughed softly. ”1 know about that. I do. So do you, I'd wager.”
What am I supposed to do? That was what she wanted to ask, but she didn't, because. . . it didn't matter she realized. She had to do what she could, what she thought best. The only question was where to start.
The sorceress took a deep breath.
”Aye, and this weather helps not,” Essan continued ”Damp, like once it was, and good for the trees and crops but not for old bones.”
”Not for young ones, either,” murmured the regent sitting back for a few moments to listen to Lady Essan reminisce.
”Years ago, in the times of snow... those were truly cold years....”
Later, even after visiting with Lady Essan, perhaps even more so, Anna could feel the walls of the liedburg closing in around her. She had to get out rain or no rain. The more she tried to do it seemed, the more isolated she got because efficiency-d.a.m.ned efficiency-meant delegating, and that meant she saw fewer and fewer people.
Back down the stairs to the receiving room she went ignoring the looks between Lejun and Giellum. Once there, she looked around, glanced to the window. The clouds were scattered, white and gray and puffy.
Good!
She rang the bell-too loudly, but she really didn't care. Skent peered in, keeping the door between him and Anna.
”I'm going tiding,” she announced. ”If Alvar is free...” She paused. ”Is Alvar training armsmen this afternoon? Could you please find out, Skent, and let me know? I'd like you to come as well”
”Yes, lady.” Skent's face brightened.
”Oh, and let Phurgen know, if you would.”
The door closed, and Anna glanced around the receiving room, then departed herself. She reclaimed her floppy brown tiding hat from her room, as well as a riding jacket, and the lutar from the saying room. Her fingers went to the dagger and truncheon she wore at her belt whenever she left the liedburg. Then she headed for the stables.
Within the southwest corner of the outer walls, the stables held the familiar odors of straw, horses, and manure, although the scents were mild, and the packed-clay floors swept clean. Tirsik saw to that. The wiry stablemaster, who looked far older than Anna and probably wasn't, greeted her; ”That great beast has been asking for you.”
”Unless I ride him into the ground, he's always complaining.”
”Riding's good for the soul, and the harmonies,” Tirsik observed. ”For horses and rulers.”
”I hope so,” answered Anna.
”Do young Skent good as well.”
”He's already here?”
”Like a bird, he flew out here.”
Anna grinned, then headed for the stall.
Whuff!
”Yes, I know. It's winter, and I've been neglecting your riding. Grooming isn't enough for you.”
Farinelli stepped sideways as she picked up the brush and entered his stall, then offered a second whuff more subdued than the first. She finished grooming and saddling Farinelli, and the blond gelding fairly pranced as she led him into the courtyard where Fhurgen and a squad of guards rode. Skent sat upon a bay mare and smiled at her.
She smiled back, checking her gear. The lutar was strapped behind her saddle, and she mounted, with an ease she still found surprising.
”Where to, Lady Anna?” asked the dark-bearded arms-man who had replaced the unfortunate Spirda as the head of her personal guard.
”Falcor... the merchants' shops south of the liedburg.” She might not be able to shop, but she could look and listen... if anyone would talk.
Hoofs clicked on the damp stones of the liedburg courtyard as the group rode out under the raised portcullis.
Anna nodded to the armsmen at the gate, but neither moved. Hanfor's training-or Alvar's or Himar's, she suspected.
The flat expanse outside the gates that separated the liedburg from the buildings of Falcor was a good hundred yards square. The damp clay was level with the stones of the roadway that led to the gate, but it bad taken most of the winter to remove the piles of dirt and debris that the Evult's flood had swirled through the eastern parts of the town.
Anna turned Farinelli south. Once past the open s.p.a.ce, she rode slowly down the street. Various structures, shops on the lower floors and dwellings above them, filled both sides. Even in the chill, small handfuls of people gathered here and there, talking.
”... still the best spices in Falcor...”
”...hot fowl Hot fowl on a chill day...”
”...you sure there's no worms in that flour?”
Anna wanted to smile when she neared the cloth merchant. In the window were the deep-green velvets she remembered from the hot summer day when she'd taken her first ride through Falcor, young and stiff- necked Spirda beside her. She had wanted to stop, but she'd decided that the Erdean equivalent of shopping wasn't a good idea on her first ride. Now, as regent and sorceress, she actually could afford to shop even less.
A thin girl, her brown hair braided into a roll at the back of her neck, looked at the sorceress from the cloth merchant's door.
Anna reined up, then dismounted, and handed Fadnelli's reins to Fhurgen. She walked toward the girl, who seemed frozen in place.
Fhurgen banded the reins to another guard, a blond, and vaulted down to stand just behind and beside Anna.
”You know,” Anna said conversationally, ”I've ridden past here many times and I've always wanted to stop. Is this your family's shop?”