He and the land warden knelt, and the prince took her leave of them.
The land warden said, “The peer asks one more thing of you. She wants you to take an assistant. Not only would this lessen the burden you carry, but the peerdom needs someone who can stand in your place when you travel.”
“The peer and I have discussed this,” Arne said. “Neither of us could think of a suitable person. The more capable one-namers are already skilled crafters, and Midlow never has enough of them. Their work is needed. The less skilled are less capable in other ways, also.”
His assistant had to be a one-namer. No peerager would consent to serve under a commoner, and a lasher could not be put in the position of giving orders to one-namers even if one had been capable of it. “Did her majesty suggest anyone?”
“Yes. She has already made the appointment. Your new assistant is waiting to meet you.”
Arne was astonished. It was unlike the peer to take such an action without discussing or even mentioning her choice. “Is it a court server?”
“Yes. From the peer’s own household. The peer thinks her capable of learning quickly and assuming responsibility, which are essential qualities for your assistant.”
Arne nodded resignedly. “If the peer requests it—”
“She does. She knows training an assistant will be one more burden on you, and the fact that you didn’t choose her yourself may make it especially difficult, but she asks that you do the best you can.”
Arne wondered if the peer was using his need for an assistant as an excuse for choosing a wife for him as she had done for his father. There were several conspiracies underway to get him wived, and he received broad hints in that direction almost daely. The most recent, firmly put forward by his mother, Lonne, was an attractive village girl named Selta, a talented seamster. Lonne had long considered Arne’s household poorly managed, and Selta was her candidate to correct that—the fourth she had advanced since Arne’s father died. She persistently recounted each girl’s virtues to him until the girl lost patience and accepted another man’s offer.
All of Arne’s lovers had thought him the most desirable suitor in the peerdom at first—he owned the best and largest house in Midd Village, he had the highest earning credits of any one-namer, and the wife of the first server would instantly become the first woman of the peerdom among commoners—but they quickly learned that a man who worked enormously long hours, who had to travel frequently, who could be called away at any moment, who always had his thoughts on some crisis that had to be resolved immediately and several others that might happen, made a poor lover and would make a worse husband. Lonne didn’t know it yet, but Selta already had taken another lover.
Until now, the peer had been more subtle. She frequently asked Arne about the village girls, but their discussions always concerned work skills.
The land warden led him to the room where his new assistant was waiting. She was looking out of the window when they entered, a tall, slender woman with blond hair cut short in the manner of court servers. The land warden spoke to her, and she turned to them with obvious reluctance.
Arne didn’t recognize her until she flashed a look of undisguised hatred at him. It was Deline, the deposed prince.
He was too startled and disconcerted to speak. More than that—he was flabbergasted, but even as his mind struggled to grasp this strange turn of events, he could not help admiring the dying peer’s wisdom. She had a mother’s concern for her elder daughter. She knew there was no place in the peerdom for a former prince, so she had created a place. The peer also knew Arne would have to look after Deline if she were his assistant.
The land warden introduced her with awkward formality and then left them. Arne seated himself—which he could not have done without permission a few hours earlier—and signaled Deline to sit down. “Did the peer offer you any choices?” he asked.
Deline shook her head dully. “She ordered me. This is my punishment.”
Arne frowned. If Deline thought of her new job as punishment, she would be a thoroughly inept assistant. In order to succeed, she must see it as an opportunity for redemption.
“Your life will be entirely different,” he said slowly. “If you come to Midd Village with the idea of continuing the leisure you enjoyed as a peerager, you will be useless to me and to yourself. One-namers work. If they didn’t, the Peerdom of Midlow and Midlow Court couldn’t exist.”
“I know that—now.”
“The first server’s job is to plan their work, make certain they have whatever it is they need to work with, and then see that the work is done and done well. I was trained to it from childhood—almost from infancy. I served a prenticeship with every kind of crafter in Midd so I could learn the techniques and requirements of all of the crafts. You will have to do the same. While you are doing it, you also will have to train yourself to know what is happening everywhere in the peerdom, and what has to be done, and when, and how. The position of assistant to the first server is both an honor and a responsibility. In order to deserve the honor, you must fulfill the responsibility. My father taught me that honors must be paid for, over and over. Do you understand?”
She shrugged. Then she nodded dully.
He wondered how long it would take to teach her how to work. This was something she knew nothing about. She was accustomed to physical exertion, she was an excellent rider, and the way she controlled a horse showed that she had strong hands and arms, but Arne couldn’t even guess how she would react to unending, monotonous labor.
She also had to learn to walk. She was accustomed to riding her horse everywhere, and one-namers traveled on their feet. The walk to Midd Village would be the longest she had ever taken.
“You made yourself my enemy when we were children,” Arne said. “You probably aren’t aware that I have never been yours. Now you need help, and I am prepared to give you as much as I can—but you must earn it. You must work hard and well. You must want to succeed, or no one can help you.”
“I know the peer my mother won’t order you to keep an assistant you don’t want,” she said. “Both she and my uncle the land warden made that very clear.”
Arne didn’t want to begin their relationship with a threat, so he made no comment. “Your life is in your own hands, now,” he told her. “It will be whatever you make it. If you hate your neighbors and those who work with you, don’t be surprised if they hate you. If you share your joy with them, they will share theirs with you.”
“What joy?” the former prince demanded.
Arne got to his feet. “The peer asks this of both of us, and she expects us to do our best. We will go to Midd Village now, and find a dwelling place for you, and get you settled there.”
He began demonstrating the first server’s responsibilities on the walk to Midd Village. They took West Valley Road, which had not been repaired that sike, and even though dusk was approaching and the light was poor, he showed her places where soil erosion was about to undermine the road and told her the procedure for ordering repairs and seeing that they were done. He showed her how to inspect beams and planks in the bridges they passed, how to spot a defective roof in a no-name compound, how to quick-survey a wooded plot to determine the number of trees ready for cutting. He turned aside to speak sharply to the lashers in charge of a group of no- namers whose cultivation sledge was not cutting deeply enough.
She watched and listened sullenly without the slightest spark of interest. It seemed like a most unpromising beginning, and while he talked, he was pondering another problem that had to be faced: How would Midd Village receive his new assistant?
He feared it would be horrified. Since the lasher raid, everyone had become spy conscious. Neighbors and fellow crafters who had lived and worked together amicably for a lifetime suddenly suspected each other of betraying the village to the wicked prince, and now that same wicked prince, disguised as a one-namer, would be living among them and doing her own spying.
Perhaps Deline sensed the irony of her returning as a one-namer to the village she had arrogantly raided as prince. By the time they arrived, she seemed to be in a state of shock and incapable of speech. Arne arranged lodging for her in a boarding commons, a house where unattached women lived. Her room was on the ground floor with its own private entrance, an important convenience. The first server’s assistant would have to work odd hours, and she could come and go without disturbing the other lodgers. For a one-namer’s quarters, the room was comfortably sized and adquately furnished.
He left her there, telling her he had other arrangements to make for her, and he would look in on her again when he had finished with them.
