Only now that she was a woman herself had Jesa begun to understand how the drylander world worked, and what a small, disregarded part of things her birthplace, the Wran, truly was. The realization had come to her just a few years before, when she learned that her mistress (who was also in many ways her closest friend from childhood on) was going to marry not just another lord, but the Duke of Nabban himself, master of the biggest, most populous nation in all of the world. The thought had been so frightening that for many sleepless nights Jesa had thought about running away back to the swamp, back to her familiar lagoon. A girl like her had no business in the houses of such people. She could barely read, and what little she knew she had taught herself from watching Canthia and her tutors, but always from a distance.
One night, shortly before the marriage, she had huddled all night at the foot of Canthia’s bed, miserable at the idea of going to live in the Sancellan Mahistrevis, the great palace at the top of one of Nabban’s highest hills, where hundreds of servants already lived, each one fiercely envious of her position, no doubt. Here in this strange country, Jesa knew, even monarchs had been killed; the other servants would probably do away with her in her bed the first night. They would beat the young Wrannawoman and throw her off the Sancellan’s wall, and she would plummet all the way down to lie broken in the market at St. Galdin’s Square.
Don’t be a fool, Jesa, she had told herself over and over again throughout that long night. Jesa Green Honeybird, the elders named you. Green Honeybird didn’t run home to her nest when Tree Python chased her, she turned around and blinded him with her beak! Don’t shame your namesake by acting like a coward.
And as if her spirit bird had come to her then, in that dark night and in such a daunting, foreign place, Jesa had felt something whisper past her face and weave itself into a crown of air around her head. Then it was gone. But after that moment she had not been as frightened, and when she entered the Sancellan Mahistrevis for the first time a fortnight later, following her mistress, she had been astonished and gratified to find she had lost her fear. From Red Pig Lagoon to this strange place—what a journey she was on!
After he had stroked his infant daughter’s face with a careful forefinger, Duke Saluceris abandoned the cradle, and within a few moments had begun pacing back and forth in front of the large window that looked out over the harbor.
“It’s really very difficult to see anything but you just now, my lord,” said the duchess, “and you won’t stay in one place long enough for me to look at you properly, either. It’s not very restful.”
“I said, don’t be difficult, Canthia. I need Vullis, little as I like to admit it. The Dominiate is meeting next month and Dallo Ingadaris is introducing some damnable notion of a tariff on wool for no other reason than to push me into a fight with the High Throne. But if I have Vullis, he will pull all our northern and western lords to my side.”
The duchess smiled sadly. “My poor husband. You work so hard! Surely you do not have to convince people to listen to you—you are the duke! The king and queen themselves chose you.”
“My brother hates me for it. And those cursed Ingadarines are going to do everything they can to use him as a weapon against me.”
Little Serasina woke up then and began to fuss, and soon Jesa lost track of what the duchess and her husband were talking about. She had heard so much of this sort of thing that at first she had been frightened all the time—Thrithings-men were raiding! Nabban’s houses were at war with each other!—but now she knew that the world was bigger than she had understood, that things which seemed close when her mistress and others spoke of them were actually far away and unlikely ever to trouble the duke directly, let alone harm Jesa herself.
But some things, she had also learned, were actually closer than they seemed to be. This was proved true again just as Jesa finished patting and rocking the baby into quiet once more and put her back in her cradle. A guard knocked on the door and announced the duke’s brother Drusis, Earl of Trevinta and Eadne.
“How can this be?” Saluceris looked startled, almost fearful. “He was at his place in the east.” He stood up. “Never mind. I will meet him downstairs, dear, to spare you . . .”
But even before he had finished the sentence, the doors swung inward, and Drusis strode in. “Forgive me,” the duke’s brother half-shouted, as if to a crowd. “I am filthy from the road, and I intrude on you even in your own chamber, dear sister-in-law!”
Jesa, who could be timid at the best of times, leaped in surprise at the newcomer’s loud voice: she had never been in a small room with Earl Drusis before, though she had seen him at court functions, and he was always the subject of much conversation. Taller than his brother the duke and impressively muscular, Drusis was also daunting in other ways, with a handsome, full-lipped face and thick, curly hair, brown with a brassy shine. He wore the armor of a cavalry general, although technically he was neither, or at least that was what Jesa had heard Saluceris complain many times. He also seemed to seethe with strength and youth, although he was but a single, slim hour younger than his brother. It was almost impossible not to stare at him, though Jesa was terrified at the idea of meeting his eyes.
“You are welcome any time, good Drusis, of course,” said Duchess Canthia, holding out her hand to him. “This house is yours, also, and always will be.”
“You are too kind, sister-in-law.” He bowed and then kissed her hand.
“Of course you are welcome,” echoed Saluceris, but after the thunder of his brother’s entrance, his words were spoken quietly, even reluctantly. “We are merely surprised to see you, brother. We thought you were at Chasu Orientis.”
“And so I was. But I wasted no time getting back. I could not bear to think of you and your young family sitting here in the Sancellan, oblivious to the dangers that threaten.”
“Dangers? What dangers?” the duke demanded. Jesa thought he seemed split between genuine worry and annoyance at his brother’s sudden, loud presence.
“The horse-eaters. They have attacked us! They have attacked Chasu Orientis!”
Duchess Canthia put her sewing down. “That is terrible, Drusis. When did this happen?”
“Just a sennight ago.” Drusis walked to the window, looked down on the harbor and all the sails bobbling there like resting gulls.
“I cannot believe the Thrithings-men would be so mad, to attack your home. What did they do?”
“Oh, they did not besiege the castle itself,” said Drusis, waving his hand as if to swat away a troublesome fly. “But they attacked Drinas Novis, a town within a few miles of the castle, on the edge of my land.”
“A settlement.”
“Yes, I suppose. What does the name we give it matter? The barbarians killed a score of our people, wounded three times that many, and burned half the houses to the ground. Nearly twenty people dead, Saluceris—men, women, and children! Does it matter that their town is new?”
Saluceris shook his head. “Of course not. But it matters to the Thrithings-men that we are building towns on what was once their land.”
Drusis shook his head in outrage. “Are you defending these murderers, brother? What kind of thing is that for the duke of Nabban to do, when our own people are being killed by savages?”
“It is terrible,” said Canthia, looking to her husband. “Surely there is something we can do for them?”
Jesa thought Saluceris looked like a man who had just discovered that the widow he was marrying already had eight fat, hungry children. “Of course we can help, wife. But you, brother, I don’t understand what you want. Do you not have two score knights or more at Chasu Orientis, and pikemen a-plenty?”
When Drusis scowled, his entire face changed, the strong, handsome features becoming almost a mummer’s mask of sullen anger. “Do you think this is the only thing that has happened of late? Lesta Hermis had his land raided three times in Feyever. Last Novander the cursed Thrithings-men attacked the party of Escritor Raelis on his way to Kwanitupul. How long must we wait before we do something? Until they have set fire to the Mahistrevan Hill, murdered our children, and raped our women in their own homes?” His dark face had grown even darker with anger, but his eyes caught Duchess Canthia’s and it seemed to fluster him. “I beg your pardon for my harsh speech, my lady. I am upset and careless because of it.” He turned back to his brother. “Do not think because you wear the ducal ring by a fluke of birth, Saluceris, that I will stand back and see our land overrun by savages, our villages burned, our people slaughtered.”