Kerowyn's Ride

“So that’s why—” Kero’s voice trailed off. A great many things started making sense, now.

“I think he was afraid I’d try and take her away from him,” Kethry said, after a long silence filled only with the sound of the wind in the leaves below them. “I really do think he didn’t care as much about the property as he did about my daughter. On the other hand, I know that he always resented that every bit of his new-won wealth came from me. I think he kept expecting me to try and take over again, to control him through either the wealth, Lenore, or you children.”

Probably. That was the one thing he hated more than anything else, being controlled by someone. Maybe because he got a bellyful of taking orders when he was younger, I don’t know. I do know that he’d never have believed Grandmother didn’t have some kind of complicated plot going.

Tarma got up, stretched, and perched herself on the stone railing of the balcony. “Well, I’m not that generous,” she growled. “The man was a common merc; a little better born than most, but not even close to landed. And that was what he wanted all his life—to win lands, and become gentry. That’s what most mercs want, once they lose their taste for fighting. Whether it’s a farm they dream of, or a place like the Keep, they all want some kind of place they can claim as their own, and that’s the long and the short of it.”

Kero shifted uneasily on her wooden bench, and put down the last of the sausage, uneaten. She had the vague feeling she ought to be defending Rathgar, but she couldn’t. Both of them were right. She knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that Rathgar had adored her mother—but she also knew his possessive obsession about his lands.

And she knew that there would be no way that Kethry could ever have convinced him that she didn’t care about the property so long as her daughter was happy. He simply could not have understood an attitude like that. Kero had heard him holding forth far too many times on the folly of some acquaintance, or some underling, giving up property for the sake of a child. And his reasoning, by his own lights, was sound. After all, if one gave up the property now, how could one provide for that same child, or leave it the proper inheritance?

“Destroy a birthright for the sake of the moment?” she’d heard him say, once, when the Lythands had settled a dispute with a neighbor by deeding the disputed land to a common relation. “Folly and madness! Your children won’t thank you for it, when they’ve grown into sense!”

And she was sure now that this was the source of his deep-seated bitterness—that he owed everything, not only to his wife’s mother, not only to a woman, but to a mage. And one who had earned it all honestly, herself.

That must have rankled the most. Mages were not to be trusted; mages could change reality into whatever suited them at the moment. Mages were the source of everything that was wrong with the world....

“That’s how and why your folk ended up with a breeding-herd of Shin’a’in horses,” Tarma said, startling her out of deep thought. “I don’t know if you know how rare it is for us to sell a stud, but we let him have one—an ungelded cull, but still, a stud. He wouldn’t listen to Keth about the lands, he didn’t have her resources, and he didn’t have her capital. He was operating on the edge of disaster, squeaking through season after season, never making a profit. We had done fine, but we’d had the Schools. This land is too rocky to be good farm land; the tenants barely managed to make ends meet. Finally I had the Clan bring in a herd of the best culls and sell them to him at a bargain price. He figured he’d outbargained the ignorant barbarians. We didn’t care; that got him something he could use to maintain the Keep and Lenore without stripping the lands bare or abusing the tenants. Then, when you and your brother were of an age to train your own beasts, I arranged to have a couple of good young mares slipped into the next batch he bought.”

She lifted her face to the sun and breeze, and Kero thought she looked very like a weathered, bronze statue. Tough, yet somehow graceful.

“It wasn’t all that hard to do,” Kethry said wryly. “Really, it wasn’t. After all, we were making trips back to the Clan every year to see the rest of my brood. It was more than worth the fuss to get him convinced you two should have them and then convince him it had been all his own idea. It was about my only way of doing anything for you after I pulled back to the Tower and promised to leave you all alone.”

“So what do you think of all this?” Tarma asked, finally turning those bright blue eyes back toward Kero. “It isn’t often a person gets an entire Clan as relatives, and right out of nowhere, too.”

“Am I ever going to get to meet them?” she asked impulsively. “The others, my uncles and aunts and all —”

Tarma laughed. “Oh, I imagine. Eventually. But right now you and I have a previous appointment.”

Kero felt a moment of disappointment, then smiled. After all, it wasn’t as if everything had to happen all at once. Look how much has happened in just the past few weeks! I think I can wait a little longer.

“Then we’d better get to it before we both get stiff,” she replied, and grinned. “Or before I get a chance to think about what you’re going to do to me at practice!”

The one thing Tarma was an absolute fanatic about was cleanliness. She insisted Kero take a bath after morning work and afternoon training, both. There was no shortage of hot water at the Tower, unlike the Keep—that was one magical extravagance Kethry was more than willing to indulge in. Once Kero got over her initial surprise,