“It’s ground down, and mixed with a binding paste, then baked, to form bricks,” Braith said, cutting out a medium-sized rock and carrying it to the bin. “The bricks are used for building.”
“So size doesn’t actually matter,” Sorrow said as she swung again and loosed another small piece.
The giant who’d decided she was his enemy stopped mid-swing, driving the handle of his axe into the ground and leaning on the curved iron top of it. “What do you want, little girl? Why are you really here?”
Sorrow lowered her axe, and mimicked his stance. “Because I don’t see how I can be the chancellor of a country if I don’t know how it works. How it’s built. Who does the building, and the mining. Because I saw the way my father governed, from a palace miles from here, a place he barely left, and I don’t think it was right. In fact, I think everything my father did was wrong. And I think I can do better. To me, that means I have to start from the ground up. No – from beneath the ground up. I have to see what the foundations of Rhannon are built on. So I’m here to learn. You don’t have to like it, but it’s happening anyway.”
She picked up her axe and swung it, carving out a decent-sized rock. Thanking the Graces for her fortune, she went to pick it up, only to find it was too heavy. Swearing under her breath, and aware she had an audience, she tried again, managing to haul it to her knees.
A large pair of hands took it from her, and carried it to the bin.
“Better,” the big man said. “But I think you can still do more.”
Sorrow accepted the challenge.
She sent the soldier back up with Braith when his overtime ended, but she stayed down there for another cycle, working beside the big man. When her arms grew too tired, she fetched water for the men from a table at the back of the room, passing it out and talking to them, asking about their families, their jobs, what they needed, what mattered to them.
A man named Wood lived in a village where they still pumped water from a well; all attempts at building pipes and reservoirs to supply fresh water from the river had been abandoned when Mael died.
Another, Salt, came from a family of celebrated violin makers, but the business had died, along with the family’s fortunes, when Harun had banned music. Salt had become a miner because of it.
Tully Dearcross had watched his young wife bleed out while giving birth when a nurse was too frightened to save her because Cerena’s life had ended thus.
Each story broke Sorrow’s heart a little more, the small and terrible damages that had been inflicted on the people. But each story furthered her resolve to help them. To be the one to do so.
When they stopped for their next break she sat with them and accepted the bread and olives she was offered, spitting the stones into the same bowl on the floor, exhilarated when she finally got one in. It was only when the soldier returned, with a message from Irris saying they really should leave, that she said her goodbyes to a crowd that was much warmer than the one she’d first met, the giant even deigning to shake her hand between his massive ones. Whether that meant they’d vote for her, she wasn’t sure. But they’d started to like her, she knew that. And she’d started to see ways she could help them. If she won.
They arrived back at the manse to three birds from Charon, all of them calling Sorrow reckless and stupid, every word reeking of rage that he’d been disobeyed. He chastised his daughter too, but the girls didn’t care. While Sorrow had been down in the mine, Irris had been charming the mine’s managers, and both of them felt positive for the first time since Sorrow had returned from Rhylla.
“Think we can woo the physician’s guild tomorrow?” Sorrow said as the two girls ate their supper, both tearing meat from bones in their hunger.
“I think you’ll have an honorary medical degree by the end of the day,” Irris replied.
As the days passed, they entered the season of the Gathering Gala, and for the first time in eighteen years Rhannon would celebrate it. From what Sorrow had read, the Gathering was all about preparing for winter, harvesting the fields, readying the home for a change of season, and lighting fires to stave off the darkness. It was a time to put away the year gone by and look forward to the next. For Sorrow, this year, it had a touch of fate to it. A time to start anew.
Sorrow had never paid her respects to the Grace of Hearth and Plenty, nor had she painted a crown of laurels gold and worn it in her hair to mimic the natural turning of the leaves as they died, though she knew all the traditions from her books, and her grandmother (not her grandmother, she reminded herself). There was to be a large party to celebrate it, in Istevar. She, and Mael, were to go as guests.
She read in the morning circular that Mael was planning to host a small, pre-Gathering party of his own, no doubt at Vespus’s insistence.
Sorrow, however, decided not to throw a party. She could have done as Mael had, and invited professors and local leaders to an exclusive event. Instead, she, Irris and their band of soldiers-cum-bodyguards toured Rhannon like a troupe of street players, celebrating the run-up to the harvesting festival with the people.
They never announced where they’d go, not wanting to tip the Sons of Rhannon off or give them time to plan, instead arriving with little fanfare, and never staying more than an hour or two. They darted across Rhannon, deciding where to go the night before: the South Marches one day, the West the next. Then south again to Asha, then skipping over Istevar to go to the far north.
They took every precaution, using unmarked carriages they hired on the day, never staying in a village or town they’d visited, never booking ahead or giving their real names. Sorrow and Irris shared rooms when they stayed overnight in inns, their soldiers sleeping on pallets outside the door, wedging a chair under the handle as an extra precaution. Windows were bolted, sometimes nailed shut, with Sorrow reimbursing the innkeeper the next morning. They kept knives under their pillows and Sorrow went nowhere alone; Irris even checked the bathroom before she used it, remaining outside to periodically ask if she was all right.