Isana closed her eyes for a moment, pained. Thirty-seven years old, and she was alone. No suitors, naturally. No garlands to wear, or dances to plan for, or flirtations to plot. That was all long past her, even with the apparent youth her watercrafting bestowed on her. The youth that kept her always a bit distant from the other women her age-women with husbands, families.
She opened her eyes and idly bade the spilled water to make itself useful and clean the floor. The puddle began sweeping over it obediently, gathering up bits of dust and debris as it did, and Isana went to open the door.
Cold air poured in, sharp contrast to the steamy kitchen, and she closed her eyes, taking deep, bracing breaths.
She had to admit it. Beritte's words had stung her, not simply because she'd been feeling too many of the adolescent's intense emotions, but because they had rung true as well. Beritte had all the luscious curves and rondure that would draw any man in the Valley to her-and indeed, she had half a dozen of them dancing on her strings even now, including Tavi, though the boy tried to deny it. Beritte. Firm and ripe and able to bear strong children.
The way no one had thought Isana would ever be able to.
She pressed her lips together and opened her eyes. Enough. There was too much work to be about to let an old pain rise to the surface, now. Thunder rumbled over the Valley's floor, and Isana crossed to the northern window, opened it, and eyed the mountain peak to the north. Garados loomed in all of his surly majesty there, snow already gliding further down his shoulders and toward the valley floor, warning of the coming winter. Dark clouds gathered around his head, and as she watched, they flashed with dark green lightning, sending another rumbled warning across the Valley. Lilvia, then-Garados's wife, the storm fury, gathering up clouds for another assault on the people of the Valley. She would wait all day, gathering the warmth of the sun into her cloud-herds and then send them stampeding across the Valley in a rush of thunder and wind and, like as not at this time of the year, sleet and icy rain.
Isana pressed her lips together. Intolerable. If only a decently gifted windcrafter would settle down in the Valley, they might blunt the worst of Thara's storms before they ever reached the steadholts-but then, any windcrafter that strong would be serving as a Knight or one of the Cursors.
She walked to the sink and touched the spigot, alerting the furies inside that she desired water from the well. A moment later, it spilled out, cold and clear, and she filled a pair of pans before letting the furies stop the flow of it, then went around the kitchens and refilled the water in the pots that had boiled over. A moment later, she took the bread from the ovens, setting it out in its pans, and slipped the next round of pans into their places. She glanced around the kitchens once more, making sure that everything was in place. The puddle was finished with the floor, so she shooed it out the door to ease into the earth beside the threshold and sink back into the ground.
"Rill?" Isana called. "What's taking so long?"
The water bubbled and stirred in her scrying bowl (which doubled as her mixing bowl most days), and then three little splashes announced Rill's
presence. Isana crossed back to the bowl, drew her braid back over her shoulder, and regarded the surface of the water intently as the ripples stilled.
The fury showed her a dim view from what must have been a stagnant pool somewhere in the Pine Hollows. A murky shape that could have been Bernard paced across the image in the bowl and then was gone. Isana shook her head. Rill's images were not always entirely clear, but it seemed that Bernard and Tavi were still pursuing the missing flock.
She murmured a dismissal to Rill and set the bowl aside-and then noticed a sudden lack of sound from the courtyard. A breath later, the tension levels of Bernardholt swelled into painful intensity.
Isana steeled herself against the perceptions and walked briskly out of the kitchen. She kept her breathing steady and held herself with rigid confidence. The holdfolk were pressed shoulder to shoulder, facing the center of the courtyard. They were silent, but for faint mutters and worried whispers.
"Kord," she murmured. Isana stepped forward, and the holdfolk made way for her, clearing a narrow path through the onlookers until she could see the scene in the center of the courtyard.
Two men stood facing one another in the courtyard, and the air between them practically thrummed with tension. Kord stood with his arms folded over his chest, the ground at his feet shifting and trembling. His greasy beard framed his smile sharply, and his eyes were bright and eager beneath his heavy brows.
Facing him stood Steadholder Warner, a tall man, slender as a post, with gangling arms and legs and a head that shone bold but for a fringe of wispy grey hair. Warner's narrow, chiseled face had flushed bright red in anger, and the air around him quivered and danced like heat rising off an oven.
"All I'm saying," Kord drawled, "is that if that little slut of yours can't keep her legs together and men out from between them, it's your problem, friend. Not mine."
"Shut your mouth," Warner snarled.
"Or what?" Kord asked, throwing a sneer into the words. "What are you going to do, Warner? Run and hide behind the skirts of a woman and whimper for Gram to come save you?"
"Why you…" Warner spat. He took a step forward, and the air in the courtyard grew detectably warmer.
Kord smiled, a flash of teeth and said, "Go ahead, Warner. Call it to juris macto. Let's settle this like men. Unless you'd rather humiliate your little
whore by having her testify how she seduced my boy in front of every Stead-holder in the Calderon Valley."
One of Warner's sons, a tall and lean young man with his hair shorn in Legion-fashion stepped up to his father and took his arm. "Pa, don't," he said. "You can't take him on in a fair fight." The other two took up a spot behind Warner, while Kord's sons mirrored them behind their own father.
Warner's daughter rushed to his side. Heddy's cobweb-fine hair rose and rippled in silken yellow waves in the heated air around her father. She threw a conscientious look around her, her face flaming scarlet with embarrassment. "Papa," she urged. "No, not like this. This isn't our way."
Kord snorted at the girl. "Bittan," he asked, glancing back at his son. "You stuck your wick in that skinny tramp? Might as well have gone after one of Warner's sheep."
Isana had to clench her fists and brace herself against the raw tide of emotions in the courtyard. From Heddy's panicky fear and humiliation to Warner's rage, to Kord's sly satisfaction and eagerness, every feeling washed over her, too intense to ignore. She forced them all away from her and took a breath. Kord's earth fury was a vicious beast, trained to kill. He used it to hunt and to slaughter his cattle. Any fury started taking on aspects of its partner, after a while, but even considering Kord himself, the earth fury was a bad one. A killer.
Isana swept a look around the courtyard. The holdfolk all stood well clear of the conflict. None of them wanted to involve themselves in a struggle between Steadholders. Crows take her brother! Where was he when she needed him?
The flood of intense anger from Warner grew more harsh-in only a moment more, he would give in to Kord's taunts and take the matter to juris macto, the Realm's legal form of duel. Kord would kill him, but Warner was too furious at the treatment of his daughter to consider that. Warner's sons, too, were flooding her with a growing torrent of anger, and Kord's youngest son burned with a barely disguised lust for violence.
Isana's heart fluttered with all the emotions, piling on top of her own fear. She pushed them all firmly away, struggling to master them-and stalked out into the courtyard, squarely between the two men, and put her hands on her hips. "Gentlemen," she said, letting her voice ring out. "You are interrupting lunch."