The Fires of the Rulership: The End in the Beginning, #3

Chapter 1

R aneh, you can’t give up, Mother told me, arranging a comb in my hair.  Once, it wouldn’t have bothered me to put it all up for a social event.  In fact, when I was twelve, I’d been excited to start doing so.

But now, it felt like insult to injury.  Everyone else my age would have their hair down.  Everyone else would be married.

I don’t want to go to a party, I complained.  I don’t have any suitors.  I’m twenty.  It’s embarrassing.

"That’s exactly why you do need to go, Mother said briskly.  You’re twenty years old, and I assume you still want to get married.  There’s no time to waste."

I stared at the mirror glumly.  My loops of thick, black hair were pulled back in combs with no flowers on them.  None.  I hadn’t had to go to a party without an escort since I was fourteen.  I felt so unwanted and unappealing.

I didn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of landowner heirs flirting and courting and laughing, or worse, the newly-marrieds, shyly dancing with only each other and alternating between pride and bashfulness.  The thought made me feel sick with jealousy.

Hurik can take you, Mother said, as if reading my mind.  He hasn’t gotten up the nerve to ask the girl he likes yet.

I made a face.  Just what I need: my little brother.  That’ll really make me feel like I’m desirable.

I can’t believe he even goes to social events now, I said.  He never went before.

That was because he didn’t have status.

He still doesn’t!  He’s a mathematician!

But the girl he likes is a landowner’s heir.

Ah.  I rubbed my forehead.  He really does like to make things difficult for himself, doesn’t he?  How long has that been?

A few months.  I don’t think she knows yet.

"Then how do you know?"

Mother smiled mysteriously.  Let’s just say I’m not as blind as he thinks.

The thought of going with my brother was still humiliating, but I had to admit, my curiosity was piqued.  All right, I said reluctantly.  I’ll go with Hurik.

Perfect, Mother said, giving my hair one last tuck.  She headed for the doorway.  I’ll ask him what flowers he wants to give you.

I put my head back against my chair.  He had better give me something like white speckies and thayflowers, not something romantic like nutwark blossoms, or I am going to punch him.

Fortunately, even Hurik wasn’t clueless enough to give me ellases or nutwark blossoms, though apparently Mother had to pull lef stalks out of his bouquet.

‘Skill with cooking’ is not an appropriate way to ask a girl to a party, I heard Mother’s voice from downstairs.

But Grandmother likes it when I give her those! Hurik protested.

I stuffed my knuckles in my mouth to keep from laughing.

Once I composed myself, I came downstairs, my layers of white softset underskirts brushing the stairs behind me.  I found Hurik in the entryway, trying to stuff hollow torron stalks into empty spaces of the bouquet.  I barely kept my face straight.

Um, nice bouquet, I said.  Let’s see, climbing cleas, slipgrass, torron stalks, shakeleaves . . . shakeleaves?  Really?

They mean ‘trembling with fear,’ Hurik said.

Yes, I know what they mean.

Well, I thought you might be nervous about your first party since you got back.

Thank you, I said dryly.  I am so not wearing any of those.  Say, could you include a few flowers?  So I can make something to wear out of them?

Climbing clea pods and slipgrass would look good together, Hurik said, holding up a bracelet that already had them stuffed in sloppily.  See?

I appealed to Mother with a look of silent desperation.

We have a few dried adlies, Mother said.  Why don’t I get one of them?

Please, I said.

We don’t have any thayflowers because we dug up your garden to plant food there, Hurik explained.  And I used up all the speckies practi— um, never mind.

I fought to hide my amusement.  So he had been trying to get his nerve up to ask some girl to go with him.  I wondered which girl she was, and if I knew her.  If she’d been younger than twelve before I left, we’d probably never met.

Mother returned with two dried adlies, one of them pink and one of them purple.  They weren’t exactly the best match for my outer skirt, which was brown burrun, but they’d work better than slipgrass, at least.

I’m thinking we could pin your family signature at your collar, and the flowers from Hurik underneath, Mother said.  What do you think?

I usually wear flowers in my hair, I objected.  They’re much more noticeable that way.

You don’t want to look taken, even at first glance, Mother said firmly, opening a small pouch with pins in it.  She picked up a family signature from the entryway table, which was crumbling and looked like it had seen better days, but that was to be expected in late harvest season.  She held it up at my throat.  Here?  On a choker?  Or lower down?

Lower down, I said, wrinkling my nose.  I don’t like things around my neck.

Oh, that’s right, Mother said carefully, pinning the family signature just below the neckline of my bodice.  She deftly wove it between layers of fabric, so that it wouldn’t pierce through the bottom layer and rest coldly against my skin.  Yaika’s the one who likes — liked — likes —  Mother paused and looked confused.  I don’t even know anymore.

She wore a choker with the Ruler’s signature the day before she left, I said.

Oh, that’s right.  Mother sighed.  You know, it may have seemed a short time for you, but it was two long years for us.  I don’t even know how to talk to her anymore.

I talk to her the same as always, I said.

I’m even ruder, Hurik said.

Mother quirked a smile.  As I’ve noticed.  She just seems so . . . adult now, you know?  Like she doesn’t need me.  Not like you, Raneh.

I tried to take that as a compliment.  It wasn’t easy.  I knew what she meant, because I might have aged two years, but to me, it had felt like only a few weeks.  Still, if anybody ought to seem more adult, it should be me.  I was twenty.  She was fourteen.

Well, she’s Yaika, all right, Hurik broke in.  You know what she told me?  Right before she left?  ‘You’d better not start overeating again now that we’re all going to have food again.’  She said if I did, she’d tell everyone we weren’t related.

I chortled.

Well, I’m sure I’ll have ample opportunities to get used to it, Mother sighed.  Which is thanks to your being the Keeper, Raneh.  I appreciate that.

I smiled weakly.  I wasn’t sure I ought to be thanked for Yaika’s decision to come down regularly to learn about my new system.  It had been the Ruler’s idea, after all.

Well, I think you ought to teach me more before you teach her, Hurik volunteered.  Then I’ll rub her nose in the fact that I know more right before she leaves.

I’m up for it, if it would get her to stay longer, Mother smiled.

I tried not to look Hurik in the eye.  I hadn’t yet decided on anyone else to teach my new system to, and I’d only started with Yaika because the Ruler had insisted on it.  I knew I had to teach it to as many people as possible eventually, but right now . . . well, I hadn’t told anyone besides my family about being the Keeper, and I sort of didn’t want to.

Sure, it was great that I had a new system to replace the one they’d lost.  But I’d also killed magic.  Personally.  There were a lot of people who were going to be really angry with me, and I didn’t want to deal with that.

I wasn’t sure what the neighbors thought about the burnflowers I’d brought back.  Father had been distributing the seeds to everyone within reach, but I’d barely seen anyone; I’d just kept working on layouts for the garden, so we could find some way to grow food through the cold season.  This was the first real break I’d taken from that since Yaika left.

I glanced over at the shakeleaves in the ridiculous bouquet on the entryway table.  Okay, Hurik was right; I was nervous.  But if he thought I wanted to advertise that, he was crazy.

There you go, Mother said, pinning the dried adlies about an inch or so below the family signature, so it was in the middle of my bodice.  That looks nice.

How about we put some climbing clea pods in there, too? Hurik asked, holding up a handful from his bouquet.

I gave Mother a suffering look.

It would help clarify that you came with a friend, not suitor, Mother said.

Fine, I sighed.  But two.  Only two.  No more than that.

I promise to put on no more than two-tens-and-seven, Hurik said with a broad grin, reaching for the bouquet.

I snatched his arm.  You forget that I know numbers now.  Don’t try it!

Chapter 2

Unsurprisingly, a party can be very awkward when you don’t know anyone.  Unfortunately, it can get even more awkward when it turns out you do: everyone just looks different, and you’ve forgotten all of their names.

People who I thought were complete strangers kept coming up to me and exclaiming over my return from Central, asking about my sister, and then wanting to introduce me to their husbands or their younger siblings.

One of them, Gendri, even seemed to take malicious delight in the news that I wasn’t married, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember why.

I finally decided to hide out by the refreshments table, and then discovered there wasn’t one.

Well, yeah, no one hands out free food anymore, Hurik said, as if this were obvious.  Besides, there’s not room for one.

He was right about that.  I looked around the downstairs of the house gloomily.  The dance floor was a tiny bubble of space, with people sitting on chairs and couches all around the edges and partway up the stairs.  There were no tables, only three musicians squeezed onto the landing of the stairs, and perfume was scarce.  Even the decorations looked shabby.

They could at least have tried to make it look nice, I hissed to Hurik.  How many times have they used this decor?

Probably a lot, Hurik whispered back.  Nobody’s been growing new fabric crops.  The clothes show it, too.  Look.  He pointed at a giggling girl who passed, who had a bunch of little yellow flower shapes sewn across the back of her pink skirt.  Those are probably patches.

I closed my eyes and breathed in heavily.  "Great.  Not having magic has ruined everything."

Not really, Hurik said.  I opened my eyes to catch him shrugging.  I like it better this way.  Less pretentious.  Except for the food.  I miss the food.

Don’t we all, a girl said, passing by us.

Do you want to dance? Hurik asked, holding out his hand.

Um, I thought.  Do you dance? I asked.

Sure, he said.  I’m sixteen.  I’ve danced with girls before.

Bizarre.  Okay, then, I guess, I said.

It turned out I was out of practice.  Hurik wasn’t.  I also was particularly lousy with the type of dance he started.

Okay, so, my favorite dances were all ones with swoops and twirls and spinning around.  It seemed that with two years of no magically-expanded space, everyone had stopped doing those, and focused instead on the kind I liked least: complicated footwork in a small, confined space.

Naturally, this made me look like an atrocious dancer.  I stepped on Hurik’s foot twice, and he didn’t even blink.  In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice me.  That was odd.  Where was he . . .?

I followed his gaze to a pair of girls giggling off to the side.

Aha, I thought, grinning.

Both of them looked about fourteen, and neither of them wore flowers.  The one in yellow and brown had a Childhome signature, which meant she was probably their fifth or sixth heir, whichever of their children had turned twelve after I left.  The one in pale peach wore a signature I didn’t know.

Which one is he interested in? I wondered.

As I watched, the one in pale peach glanced over in our direction.  Hurik yanked his head back and started adding in arm flourishes.

Bingo, I thought, grinning.

Say, who’s that girl in the pale peach? I asked casually, gesturing with my head in her direction.

Wh-what? Hurik sputtered.  Uh . . . she’s nobody.  I mean, no, she’s Intal’s friend.  Uh, Yaika’s friend Lintis.  Do you remember Yaika’s friend Lintis?  It’s her cousin.  After Lintis got married, she moved out here.  I think the aunt and uncle are thinking about adopting her.  To be their next heir.  Because her parents aren’t landowners.  S-so she’s no one.  That we know.  I mean — no, wait, yeah, we don’t know her.  Uh.  It’s nothing!

I was highly amused.  I hadn’t heard Hurik this flustered since he was eight years old and tried to give a vassal girl he liked a present.  It hadn’t gone over very well.  She hadn’t been a big fan of buzzcrickets or hopping worms.

Maybe you should ask that complete stranger to dance, I said.  She looks about your age.

She’s fourteen and a half, Hurik said immediately.  That’s more than a year younger than me.

A perfectly acceptable age range, I said.  Go ask her.

Hurik seemed to freeze into place.

I was tempted to shove him forward, but I forced my hand to stop just short of whumping him on the back.  I reminded myself that I wouldn’t have appreciated that when I was fourteen.

In fact, I hadn’t appreciated it when Grandmother had done it to me over the crush I’d had on Adran, a very cute boy who had managed to get married a year later to someone other than me.

But watching someone waffle and dither over something you knew they wanted to do was maddening.

Well, if you’re not going to ask her to dance, I’m going to find somebody to dance with me, I announced to him, pulling away as the song ended.

Uh huh, Hurik said, not looking away from the girls.

I somehow refrained from rolling my eyes, and squeezed through the tightly-packed crowd at the edges of the dance floor, nearly tripping over an empty chair that had been left askew when someone had gotten up from it.  Hopping up and down on one foot and clutching my ankle, I wanted to scream.

Okay, so maybe magic dying had been necessary.  So maybe space-enhancing hadn’t been on the top of my list of things to worry about when I’d created my new system.  But did the loss of magic have to be so inconvenient?  I wasn’t used to navigating through parties crammed into a normal-sized space!

In an attempt to get a better view of the room, I navigated to the stairs and stepped around the people sitting on them.  I climbed most of the way up to the landing, right near where the pointed end of a musician’s heavy slabstring rested.  As it wriggled around and hopped to the rhythm of its low-pitched bass line, I alternated between scanning the room and nervously checking my feet.

Across the room, a girl in humongous floofy skirts was flirting with a gangly boy right near a fireplace.  She shoved the safety grate away so that she could squeeze past another couple to get closer to him.

Two couples were squeezed on the same couch near them, both girls practically on the laps of their boys.  One of the men, who looked about eighteen, wore an empty signature at his throat, a clear sign he was engaged.  As he put his arm around the girl on his lap, I felt a stab of jealousy.

There were plenty of single boys around, but most of them looked too young for me.  In the end, I narrowed it down to seven potential candidates.

One of them kissed a girl near him.

Six, I thought with annoyance, and turned to look at the others.

Gawarn sat in a corner in a disapproving look on his face.  He usually looked disapproving about something; he was even more formal and stiff than Jontan was.  Right now, his source of displeasure seemed to be his younger sister, who was dancing with a young man in an entirely proper way.  I tried to convince myself to give him a chance.

Another one, whose name I was pretty sure was Edric, was standing as far from the dance floor as possible, practically hugging the wall in his desperation to stay far away from it.  I vaguely remembered him being so shy that he barely spoke.

There was one man I recognized but couldn’t remember the name of.  I was pretty sure he’d been engaged last time I’d seen him, but he clearly wasn’t now, because I watched him dance with two different girls.  That might or might not be a good sign, depending on the reason why he was no longer engaged.

The fourth possibility, I wasn’t sure if I recognized or not.  He looked vaguely familiar, but that didn’t necessarily mean we’d met.  His clothes were noticeably shabby, which implied that he might be a newly-adopted, formerly-vassal heir.  I made a mental note to find out whether he was someone whose name I should remember before I asked him to dance.

The last two, I didn’t recognize.  One of them was tall, which I sort of liked, and very, very skinny, which I didn’t.  But that could just have been because of the famine; after all, compared to some of the girls here, I actually had a healthy-looking waist size.  It was strange not to be one of the skinniest girls in the room.  Strange and rather nice.  I felt like I might compare favorably.

The final possibility wore a family signature dangling from from his head and down his back in an ungainly mess.  It looked like it was about to tumble onto the floor, but it kept not doing so.  Finally, I realized that the confused looks of people around him were probably the aim.  He must have pinned it that way.

It’s just like Derrim’s sense of humor with the awful-smelling perfumes, I thought.  I don’t want another Derrim.  I’ll pass.

I checked the room and noticed that the skinny man wasn’t currently dancing, so I forged my way down the stairs and through the crowd in order to get to him.  My heart pounded, and I clenched and unclenched my fists, reminding myself that embarrassment was a luxury I couldn’t afford to indulge, not when I was almost too old to get married.

Hi, I said boldly, planting myself right next to him.  Do you want to dance?

He did a double take and stared at me as if I were a two-headed torron stalk.

Argh!  Inwardly, I cringed.  I barely kept my face impassive with an effort.  I should have made small talk first.  Or introduced myself.  Or done anything else that didn’t make me look so forward that I’d scare him away.  This is so humiliating!  I hate this!

Ooookay, he said slowly, glancing over at the dance floor.  Um, I don’t think I know your name.

I’m Raneh, I said.  Of the Freshgrown family.  I was up at Central until recently.  I was there for a few years.

He stared at me disbelievingly.

Great, I thought, wanting to pound my fist on my forehead.  Now I look like a liar.  Or a braggart.  Or something else completely ridiculous.

I’m Raneh, I sighed.  I’m going to shut up now.

Oh!  His face cleared.  I think I’ve heard of you!  Your sister is Yaika, right?

Yes! I said with relief.  Hurik’s my brother.  He’s over there.

I pointed to the corner where my brother was currently skulking, neither asking anybody to dance nor even talking.  It reminded me uncomfortably of how I’d acted when I was twelve.  But the boy was sixteen.  He really, really ought to have learned how to navigate a social event by now.

It’s an honor to meet you, then, the guy said, giving a little bow.  I’m Aron.  I’m the first heir to the Brushgrass family.  He pointed to the crumbling signature of brushgrass stalks and squishwood leaves on his chest.

First heir, I noted.  That implied there were others, probably younger siblings, which meant that he was probably a birth heir, not adopted.  I didn’t recognize the family name, though.  New landowners? I hazarded.  Or visiting relatives?

Sort of new landowners, he said, looking awkward.  We haven’t quite paid for the land yet.  We put the blue signal up a year ago, but . . .

Oh, wow, I thought, swallowing.  I guess that would happen, with no one answering the Ruler’s Road signals for two years.

We haven’t spent any of the status! he assured me hastily, apparently just realizing who he’d said that to.  We’ve just been waiting for a Ruler’s heir to come and take care of it!  Uh, would you have any idea when that might be?

I can mention it to my sister when she comes to visit next week, I said.

He cringed.  Ah . . . yes.  Of course.  That would be . . . great.  We’d be so relieved to get that taken care of . . .

I made a mental note to not mention it to Yaika.

So, would you be interested in dancing? I asked, holding out my hands.

He stared at my hands as if they were a completely foreign object.  A memory of someone else’s flitted across my mind, blazing clear then vanishing like smoke, leaving me with the vague impression that I’d seen somebody look at me like that before.  It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.  I felt a moment of panic that someone had found out that I was the Keeper.

Then he jumped.

Oh!  Forgive my manners!  Sorry!  Sorry!  Yes, we can dance!  Uh, do they have different steps in Central?

I’m actually somewhat out of practice, I said.  I didn’t get to do much dancing there.

I imagine your sister dances a lot, he said, taking my hands cautiously.

I kept from making a face.  His palms were very damp.  Possibly so.  I suppose I could ask her.

The dancing floor was more crowded than ever, leading to me bumping into several couples as I tried to keep up with the five-beat rhythm the musicians had, horribly, decided to start.

What is your sister like? Aron asked, raising his voice slightly because of the chatter on all sides.  What kind of person gets chosen to go to Central?

The kind that everyone likes better than me, I said promptly, then immediately wished I could take it back.  Two years of only Xillon for company had apparently made me much more blunt than I used to be.

Annnnnnnd thinking about Xillon immediately dumped his memories straight into my head.  I started calculating the status of everyone else around me until I caught myself doing it.  Great.  With effort, I yanked my mind away from the status equations.

Stupid Xillon with his mathematician background and his not mentioning that I would get the memories of other Keepers, I thought, annoyed.  If I could have gotten the Ruler’s memories, that might, perhaps, have been helpful.  But nooooo.  Only all the Keepers who’d created systems.  And I couldn’t turn them off.

I cleared my throat, trying to ignore Aron’s bemused look, and clarified, I mean, because my sister is everyone’s idea of perfection.  That’s why she got chosen to be a Ruler’s heir.

"You’re jealous