The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (60 page)

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Authors: L. E. Modesitt Jr.

BOOK: The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle
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“You talk as though he will live to be lord.”
“He will be,” insisted Anna. “I intend to see him married, to Secca or one of the other suitable fosterlings.” Anna finished the last of the water in her goblet.
Jecks rubbed his forehead. “You walk to tunes unplayed and spells uncast, as if they were already ringing in the air.”
“Can you get me maps? Good maps? Can your scouts find me what I need?” Anna asked again.
Jecks bowed his head. “We will make your maps.”
As the white-haired lord left, Anna wanted to scream. What was it with these people? Couldn’t anyone look ahead? Didn’t anyone believe that anyone else kept their word?
In the meantime, she had to give arithmetic lessons, develop a rough budget outline, meet with Hanfor, and come up with tunes for Daffyd’s players, not to mention setting up a school, figuring out what sort of answer to give the Matriarch of Ranuak, and a dozen other items she hadn’t even gotten to yet.
The meeting with Hanfor would be long, because she had to ensure that the armsmen—or some of them—could be used for some work around the liedburg, maintenance, and the like. She didn’t have the coins to pay any good-sized force that was limited just to occasional battles. Yet she didn’t want maintenance workers who carried arms.
Later, she should talk to Lady Essan, if for no other reason than to see where else she might have made a mistake or overlooked something. She hoped there weren’t too many mistakes or oversights … but she wouldn’t have bet a clipped coin—or an off-tune key-harp—on it.
A
nna walked to the single high rear window in the receiving room, where the base of the sill was nearly chest-high. She needed to rearrange the place, put the receiving/conference area somewhere with more ventilation and light. She sighed—another item for the list.
Outside, in the oblong between hall walls and the outer walls, the sky remained clear and blue. While the daytime temperatures were more moderate than before the harvest, in most places in the U.S., the day would have had people headed to the beaches or the pools.
After a last look at the blazingly clear fall sky, she walked back to the table where the scrolls were laid out for her signature—at least Menares had a decent hand and didn’t mind acting as a scribe-secretary. The row of scrolls sat there—for Secca, for Kyrun, for Cataryzna, for Nelmor’s daughter Ytrude, for Birke and his sister, and the rest generally worded to various lords, inviting them to consider sending a child to Falcor for the opportunity to study under her and various other experts.
Then she shook her head—all for what … so she could try to bring some stability to a place that had never had any? And how many lords would accept? She had to try, even if it meant fostering a child from every major and minor lord in Defalk, or if it meant only a handful.
She smiled grimly. That handful would get every advantage she could give them.
She also had to decide about Cataryzna. Should Anna send the girl home? While she had made an offer to Lord Geansor, would he see it as a veiled threat, or seize the opportunity to bring her home? Skent had told her that the crippled lord seldom traveled.
If Cataryzna loved Skent, perhaps Anna could set up a match between the two. Skent would more likely be loyal to Anna, and thus Jimbob, either through fear or gratitude, and that might keep some other ambitious lord from consolidating holdings. The last thing she or Jimbob needed was a growing barony or the equivalent on Defalk’s southern border.
Anna wanted to shake her head. She was thinking like Machiavelli. Then she smiled bitterly. Why not? She had the problems that the old Florentine had addressed.
A squeaking sound caught her ear, and she walked back to the window. A wagon laden with grain and pulled by
two bony horses creaked through the courtyard.
With a sudden gesture she turned and walked to the door, opening it. Skent, Birke and the guards stiffened.
“I’m headed to the granary. Skent, you come.” She didn’t have to tell the guards. Both followed.
The glass mantles along the main corridor had been polished, and the floor mopped and wiped dry. She sniffed. Did the place smell cleaner? She hoped so.
As she stepped into the courtyard, the armsmen practicing blades in the exercise square stiffened.
“Lady Anna!”
“Keep practicing,” she called.
“You heard the sorceress!” snapped Himar, offering a half salute to her before he turned back to his charges.
The sorceress nodded in return and walked along the walls. One of the ubiquitous chickens hopped onto the shafts of a cart drawn up beside the wagon shop and
brawwk
ed twice.
Anna passed the open door where the wagonmaster struggled with a harness.
“Good day, Mies.”
“Good day, Lady Anna.” The brawny man shook his head. “Armsmen, they never take the time …” His eyes dropped to the leather in his hands.
Anna looked at the wagon that stood by the granary.
Both the teamster and the granary man looked at Anna, then looked down.
When Anna stepped into the granary, the floor was still dirty, and damp in spots where the clay had been scooped out over time, and the storage area smelled more like manure than grain.
Stepping back out into the sunlight, the sorceress turned to the hauler. “You’ll have to wait to unload.” Then her eyes went to the square-faced man in brown. “I told you to have this clean. That was a week ago. Parts of it are damp, even wet. And it still stinks.”
The square-faced man looked at the floor. “Da never …” he muttered.
“I don’t care about your da … and what he did or didn’t do.” Anna looked at the sullen figure. “Is there any reason why you haven’t cleaned this?”
The man looked at the dark moldy floor.
“Have you been sick? Did you have to do repairs on something else?”
“No … .” mumbled the man.
Anna shook her head, trying to hold back the anger.
“Never did before … .”
That did it. The words almost leapt into her mind, and she squared her shoulders and sang.
“Grainman wrong, grainman strong,
Forever leave this place with my song!”
“No … You can’t.”
“Some would have had you killed. I’m just sending you away.” Anna glanced at Skent. “Find me Alvar or Himar or Spirda. No, Himar’s conducting arms practice. Try Spirda first. Tell him that I need a dozen men to clean up at least part of this so that they can start to unload the winter’s grain.”
“Yes, Lady Anna.”
The teamster fidgeted on his seat, and his eyes were downcast.
Anna fumbled in her purse and turned to the granary man. “I don’t want it said that I’m totally heartless. You’ve worked for a long time here, and that merits something, but you won’t change, and we have to change.”
The man looked bewildered as she stepped up and pressed two golds into his hand. “There are places to live in Falcor or elsewhere. Use these until you can get settled. But you must be out of the liedburg by the day after tomorrow. Do you understand?”
“Yes, lady.” The brokenness of his voice tore at her, but she steeled herself. If she let people disobey or refuse to change their ways, then all the lives that had been spent
already would have been lost for nothing. She had to keep that in mind. She had to.
Anna turned and headed back toward the receiving room and the scrolls she still had not signed and dispatched, hoping that she had time before she wrestled with the accounts and Menares again.
A
nna squelched a yawn. How long since she’d had a decent night’s sleep? She’d tried again the night before to use the mirror to see Elizabetta—but all she had gotten was the damned white mists and another splitting headache. Had the letter been her last contact? It couldn’t be … could it?
She forced her thoughts back to the conference table.
Menares scratched his head. “I am too old for this. Where the number goes is as important as what it is?”
Anna wished she knew more about explaining place value. A year of teaching fourth grade twenty-five years earlier wasn’t enough.
“Oh, Menares,” snapped Dythya, “‘Tis not that difficult. Where you put words when you speak changes their import. Each position you put the number to the left increases its value tenfold. You can have two eggs or twoscore eggs—it is the same thing.”
Anna was glad that Dythya understood. She even had grasped the idea of double-entry bookkeeping, although Anna had a feeling that Dythya’s bookkeeping would require as much learning on Anna’s part as the would-be accountant’s.
“I’d like to categorize what we spend coins on.”
They both looked blank.
Anna scrawled on a piece of paper. “Look. We buy food. That could be eggs, meat—”
“You slaughter from the herds of the liedburg,” interjected Menares. “And we have chickens.”
Anna kept forgetting that examples not rooted in the clear and factual reality didn’t work. “Weapons,” she said. “We buy weapons. Hanfor says we do. I know we have bought pikes, blades, and some spears.”
“You wouldn’t, if you had a weaponsmith.”
“We do, and, Menares,” Anna said sweetly, “that is a good point. Why don’t you send out word that we need one?”
“I should talk …” mumbled the white-haired counselor.
“So,” Anna pushed on, “I want numbers, how much we spent, for pikes, for blades, and for spears. Then I want a number that sums the three. I want all the expenditures set up like that, with subtotals gathered for each general grouping.”
“Like families of costs, almost,” mused Dythya.
Anna sighed. All she had wanted was a way to track what was spent so that they could project future costs. Did local lords just spend what they had and then tax or take from their landholders? She wanted to shake her head.
“If you did that for several years,” Dythya went on, “you might learn enough to guess about the years ahead.”
Most accountants would have winced about the term “guessing,” but it was close enough for Anna. “That’s one of the reasons. Another reason is that we’ll have a record of what we were charged, and …”
“You can see if they are trying to cheat you. You would not have to rely on your memory.” Dythya nodded. “Can I show my father these ideas?”
“Absolutely—after we get them working.”
“Lady Anna,” said Menares, “are you sure you do not come from Ranuak? You sound like their traders.”
“Most people who are successful in managing coins are similar to others who are successful.” Anna just hoped she would be successful in handling finances. Avery had always
said she had no head for figures, even more so after he became the great Antonio, but that was the king of the comprimarios. No one had any head for figures and analytical thought but Avery.
“Do you know what I want, now?” she asked.
“Yes, Lady Anna.” Dythya bowed her head.
“Yes, Lady Anna.”
“Fine. Take all the papers and get to work. By tomorrow I want to look at all the accounts of the liedburg, laid out the way I told you.”
“Tomorrow?” blurted Menares.
Even Dythya looked grave.
“The day after tomorrow, then.”
The two nodded.
After they left, Anna picked up the scroll that had arrived by messenger earlier in the day and glanced through it. The bottom lines were the important parts.
… we recognize that your regency has restored the Defalk we had hoped would always be, and therefore, so long as you stand as regent behind Lord Jimbob, we stand fully behind you, and offer our honor, our arms, and our levies in support of your regency.
The signature was that of Nelmor. Pretty clear, Anna reflected, and her guesses had been on target. The chauvinistic lords of Defalk would support a female as regent for an underage lord, only if she were powerful, a sorceress, and a regent, and some, unlike Nelmor, were balking at that. If her expedition succeeded—when, she corrected herself—she needed to visit some of them, like Lord Fustur, whose holdings bordered the Nordbergs—and Nordwei, in the north.
She rerolled Nelmor’s scroll, with its flowery words, and veiled references to Gatrune. She snorted. Nelmor didn’t even want to admit in writing that he might have listened to his sister.
Then she stood and left the conference room, taking the stairs up to the second floor of the main hall, heading north until she reached Lady Essan’s door.
“You can wait out here, Blaz,” she told the guard.
“Yes, Lady Anna.”
She rapped on the door to the corner suite, almost a duplicate of her two rooms, except Essan’s were on the north end of the hall.
“Yes?” asked Synondra.
“Lady Anna to see Lady Essan.”
The door flew open. “Oh, she was resting, but she will certainly see you.”
“No … I can come back.”
“Stop your protesting, sorceress-lady, and come in and see an old woman,” snapped Essan.
Anna grinned and stepped into the room. The white-haired woman had her feet up on a stool, and despite the warm temperatures—Falcor still remained as hot as late spring in Ames—a lap robe over her legs.
Anna eased into the chair across the low table.
“I do be liking my old haunts,” offered Lady Essan.
“I’m glad.” The sorceress paused. “What do you think of Lord Nelmor?”
“He be good-hearted enough, not so as you would know at first meeting.”
“He listens to his sister, but won’t admit it in public?”
Lady Essan laughed. “He listens to his lady, as well, and she is quick-witted, but in public she is silent, and all credit is his.”
Anna chuckled, but her heart wasn’t quite in it. For a moment, silence filled the chamber.
“You be going off to do something desperate, before long?” asked Essan.
“Why do you say that?”
“I been around long enough to see the signs. Your temper is sharp, and you rush from one matter to another. Everything must be done now. You insist on hiring tutors, and you have that poor Menares copying and recopying the liedburg accounts. You have your arms commander straining his wits to guess what battles he must fight in the year ahead, and you are trying to order iron stocks and find a
weaponsmith, but you find time to insist on a clean granary.” Essan smiled. “They say women are sentimental, but neither Donjim nor Barjim could release the granary keep.”
“I didn’t want to,” Anna admitted, “but I could tell Jussa wouldn’t change. He’d just hang his head and do it the same old way, and the grain would spoil. I talked to Tirsik and asked him.” She gave a sharp laugh. “He told Jussa to do something like that nearly ten years ago.”
“That be what I mean, sorceress-lord-lady. You feel, but you do what needs to be done. Do you want to tell this old heart what great venture you plan?”
“I’d rather not give any details. Let’s say I’m planning a surprise for the Ebrans.”
“I will ask no more.” Lady Essan nodded. “You are decisive, willing to risk everything for the proper outcome. Harmonies! I wish I were young again, and could ride with you.”
“You rode with Donjim?”
“Often. I remember the first peasant uprising, save that it was none of that. They had fresh-forged blades from Ranwa, and some even had breastplates, and they said they were peasants. I carried the shorter twin blades. Saw no sense in a shield that was as heavy as I was, and I was a mite in those days, even after childbearing … .”
Anna leaned back to listen. She deserved some time just to listen to someone who didn’t need something, want something, or wasn’t scheming.

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