Owlsight

aren’t also Heralds. They did that for a reason, Kel. I’m not sure that Valdemar trusts mages even now, and to have someone teaching mages in Valdemar without the sanction and the oversight of the Heralds could be trouble.”

“Urrrr. Bessst we not offend therrre eitherrrr. I sssee what you mean.” The gryphon roused all his feathers and shook. “Sssso, assside frrrom not offending anyone, what plansss have you?”

“I want to make our Vale into the place where people come to resolve their differences,” he said, his eyes alight and his voice alive with enthusiasm. “All kinds of people. I want it to become a place where everyone knows they’ll be safe to work things out without any outside influences. I want it to be the place where Hawkbrothers come when they need to work things out with Valdemarans, or where Lord Breon brings people who aren’t comfortable being in his manor. We could do really good things, Kel!”

“I agrrree!” Kel’s enthusiasm rose right along with his. “Urrr, would I be the only grrryphon in this Vale? Unless I should find a lady, of course.”

“Well, you’d certainly be the one with the most experience and seniority,” Darian temporized. “I wouldn’t bring in anyone who wasn’t junior to you.”

“That would incrrreassse my ssstatusss consssid-errrably!” Kel’s beak gaped with delight; Darian had suspected he’d get that sort of reaction.

“I’d like you to be the chief gryphon of the Silvers there,” Darian told him fondly. “Frankly, I don’t see why it shouldn’t happen that way. I suspect that the others may not realize what kind of an opportunity we will have until it is too late.”

“Asss it ssshould be.” Kel chuckled. “Afterrr all, they have had theirrr chancesss, and they ssshould let otherrrsss take risssskss of theirrr own.”

“In other words - if they’re so fond of the comfort of the Vale that they can’t see opportunity hiding behind a little temporary hardship, then they don’t deserve that opportunity.” Darian laughed, and Kel burbled with delight. “Let’s talk about this on the way home,” he added, getting to his feet. “It won’t take me a moment to clean these birds.”

“Anotherrr good plan,” Kel agreed. “We mussst sssee jussst how many morrre we can make!”

Five

Keisha kept her eyes down and bit her lip to keep from giggling as she passed her two youngest brothers. Of all the things that she thought she’d ever see in her lifetime, this was certainly the least likely of them! Here they were, up to their elbows in soap and water, doing their own laundry in the yard in full sight of everyone!

I have to admit they‘re going about it the right way, too, she thought as she opened the gate and hurried off to her workshop. Theirs is a better system than Mum ever had.

Her mother had always washed the clothing in the house, then brought the baskets of wet clothing out to hang on their lines in the sun to dry. The boys, however, had a different system. Instead of using the sinks in the house, they’d had the cooper make them two half-barrels on legs, with stopcocks as in a wine barrel in the bottoms for drain holes. One half-barrel was for washwater, the other for rinsing. They had a fire going in the fire pit with a tripod and a kettle over it, burning trash as well as heating the water for washing. The barrels held easily twice as much as the sink, maybe more, which meant that stubborn stains could soak while they scrubbed other garments. One boy scrubbed, the other rinsed, wrung, and hung, and they traded jobs each time they drained the tubs and refilled them with clean water or water and soap.

From the determined way in which they were scrubbing, they were doing a good job of it, too. I think they’re going to get the clothes done in half the time it takes Mum, Keisha thought with admiration. They‘re faster than she is, and stronger; they‘ll surely get half a day on the farm if they want to. Of course, the fact that their brothers are paying them to do their clothes isn’t hurting their feelings at all! Who knows - maybe they’ll start getting business from people outside the family and have a trade of their own!

Keisha assiduously did her own laundry; it wasn’t that difficult to manage with only the clothing for one person. Just like keeping the workshop clean, it wasn’t a lot of work as long as you kept up with it.

She had underthings that she’d left soaking in the sink overnight as a matter of fact, and she intended to do a batch of tunics as soon as she rinsed out the underthings. That was why she was in a hurry; she wanted to have her laundry out of the way before anyone came to her with a complaint.

She reached the workshop without being intercepted, and shortly had a neat line of white things drying in the garden. The tunics went in to soak in the same bleaching solution that she’d had the underwear soaking in - she’d decided that it wasn’t going to hurt to try to bleach out the old stains, even if it removed all of the old color as well. Now that she was doing a little of the dyework that Shandi used to, she was getting more and more interested in doing something with the same substances that had caused those stains in the first place.

One of them had been a very quiet gray-green; not the same, rather attractive new-mint color that the