nodded, and reined around confidently to lead Pen onto the road north. They walked their mounts along side by side for a while, threading local traffic; farm carts going, at this hour, mostly home from the markets, animals being walked to their fates at city butchers.
“Were you taught horsemanship as a child?” Pen asked.
“Yes, we had all the usual castle sports. Castle Martenden was a good place to grow up. I wasn’t apprenticed to the Order till I turned fourteen, as directed in our father’s will.”
The usual age for such placements. “Had the old lord a large family?”
“Not very, to my benefit. Rusi and I were the only boys. Rusi’s elder sister is long married, and mine chose the Daughter’s Order, and now teaches at a Lady-school down the valley of the Linnet.”
“It sounds a reasonably happy family life, then.” Pen hoped Clee would hear the delicate inquiry in that; or, if he didn’t, so much the better.
Evidently he did, for his lips turned up, wryly. “Rusi’s lady mother always treated us children fairly. And Rusi is my elder by a decade. So even if his parents had died in the opposite order, and our father had married my mother, very unlikely considering her station and lack of dower, I still would not be the heir. Nor greatly suited to the task.”
“You aren’t jealous of Rusillin’s rank?”
Clee eyed him sidelong. “I’d have been a fool not to have thought of it, and a greater fool not to have thought better of it. Are you jealous of your brother Rolsch?”
“No,” Pen realized, never having considered it quite like that before. “Rolsch plagued me in many ways, when I was growing up, if not how Drovo did—he was enough older to be above such humor, I think, as well as not being naturally inclined to it. But I never wanted his place. Still don’t.”
“That’s fortunate, then.”
As the road grew less crowded farther from town, Clee led them first to a trot and then to an easy canter, and Pen followed, heartened to have found another commonality with the prickly dedicat. After about an hour’s ride in the late spring afternoon, the waters sparkling to their right and the hills rising to their left, they rounded a curve of the lake, and the gray bulk of Castle Martenden loomed up before them.
It perched on an islet only a dozen paces out from shore, its walls seeming to grow out of the rock that was its foundation. High and solid and forbidding, they followed the contours of the islet’s bounds. This had resulted in something other than foursquare, though four round towers with conical slate caps jutted up at its corners, with a fifth for luck over the drawbridge.
The village of Martenden straggled along the road, a mere farm hamlet, though the fields and vines climbing the slopes beyond looked fair enough. A smithy, an alehouse, a leather-worker’s, a carpenter’s shop, a small inn for travelers too soon benighted to push on to the city at the lake’s end. Clee followed his glance.
“Its earlier lords had more hopes of this place,” he observed, “but they were all siphoned away by the Temple and the city merchants.”
“Mm,” said Pen. “I expect the city exploits the river for its mills, as well. And it is the logical end-point of lake traffic.”
“There is that.”
Clee led them right up to the small arched bridge and drawbridge, clopping across and returning the salute of a soldier standing guard with easy familiarity. Door and portcullis were all blocked open on this peaceful day. Inside the court, paved with fitted flagstones, the place was not so bleak. Arched porticos with stone columns ran along two sides of the irregular space. Atop them two stories of wooden galleries overlooked this light well, suggesting that those living within did not actually have to grope about in darkness at all hours. As they dismounted and a groom hurried up to take charge of their horses, Lord Rusillin himself came out on a balcony, saw them, and waved. He made
“Were you taught horsemanship as a child?” Pen asked.
“Yes, we had all the usual castle sports. Castle Martenden was a good place to grow up. I wasn’t apprenticed to the Order till I turned fourteen, as directed in our father’s will.”
The usual age for such placements. “Had the old lord a large family?”
“Not very, to my benefit. Rusi and I were the only boys. Rusi’s elder sister is long married, and mine chose the Daughter’s Order, and now teaches at a Lady-school down the valley of the Linnet.”
“It sounds a reasonably happy family life, then.” Pen hoped Clee would hear the delicate inquiry in that; or, if he didn’t, so much the better.
Evidently he did, for his lips turned up, wryly. “Rusi’s lady mother always treated us children fairly. And Rusi is my elder by a decade. So even if his parents had died in the opposite order, and our father had married my mother, very unlikely considering her station and lack of dower, I still would not be the heir. Nor greatly suited to the task.”
“You aren’t jealous of Rusillin’s rank?”
Clee eyed him sidelong. “I’d have been a fool not to have thought of it, and a greater fool not to have thought better of it. Are you jealous of your brother Rolsch?”
“No,” Pen realized, never having considered it quite like that before. “Rolsch plagued me in many ways, when I was growing up, if not how Drovo did—he was enough older to be above such humor, I think, as well as not being naturally inclined to it. But I never wanted his place. Still don’t.”
“That’s fortunate, then.”
As the road grew less crowded farther from town, Clee led them first to a trot and then to an easy canter, and Pen followed, heartened to have found another commonality with the prickly dedicat. After about an hour’s ride in the late spring afternoon, the waters sparkling to their right and the hills rising to their left, they rounded a curve of the lake, and the gray bulk of Castle Martenden loomed up before them.
It perched on an islet only a dozen paces out from shore, its walls seeming to grow out of the rock that was its foundation. High and solid and forbidding, they followed the contours of the islet’s bounds. This had resulted in something other than foursquare, though four round towers with conical slate caps jutted up at its corners, with a fifth for luck over the drawbridge.
The village of Martenden straggled along the road, a mere farm hamlet, though the fields and vines climbing the slopes beyond looked fair enough. A smithy, an alehouse, a leather-worker’s, a carpenter’s shop, a small inn for travelers too soon benighted to push on to the city at the lake’s end. Clee followed his glance.
“Its earlier lords had more hopes of this place,” he observed, “but they were all siphoned away by the Temple and the city merchants.”
“Mm,” said Pen. “I expect the city exploits the river for its mills, as well. And it is the logical end-point of lake traffic.”
“There is that.”
Clee led them right up to the small arched bridge and drawbridge, clopping across and returning the salute of a soldier standing guard with easy familiarity. Door and portcullis were all blocked open on this peaceful day. Inside the court, paved with fitted flagstones, the place was not so bleak. Arched porticos with stone columns ran along two sides of the irregular space. Atop them two stories of wooden galleries overlooked this light well, suggesting that those living within did not actually have to grope about in darkness at all hours. As they dismounted and a groom hurried up to take charge of their horses, Lord Rusillin himself came out on a balcony, saw them, and waved. He made
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