C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 Read Online Free PDF Page A

rocks. He would never, now, admit to having sailed leaf-boats, but he cherished the memory of them. He snatched a bite of sweet and pointed with the stick of crust to the place where the rapids ended and the brook ran by the lodge. “A falls there, with an old log. See, even the log is on the map. Brother Siene drew it. I remember him. He had a white beard down to his belt. He was caretaker there until I was seven.”
    “Why do you have a map of the lodge?”
    “Well, because Brother Siene loved to do maps, and he lived there alone most of the time, so he just did. But now anyone who ever wants to know about Maedishill can look in this book and see the lodge and know all its properties, and how far they go, and where the next holding starts. It makes it a legal record, because Brother Siene wrote a date on it, and the library has a date when the book came here. That proves, for instance, that it’s my father’s brook. It starts here, where it comes out of the rocks, so he has title over it until it reaches the boundary with the farmers, and if it had any fish in it—it doesn’t, no matter that Brother Siene drew them in—they would be his only until they reach the boundary.”
    “The fish wouldn’t know that,” Otter remarked, so soberly Aewyn had to laugh.
    “Fish don’t know anything.”
    “I don’t know if they do. Maybe they do.” Otter touched the painted fish with his fingers, ever so carefully. “I like his laughing fish.”
    “So do I,” Aewyn said, remembering sun on water, sparkling rays through thick green leaves. “My mother and I used to go there for a month before Papa could get time to come, and when he did, everything would change. Messengers, messengers at all hours, and lords coming in for visits with dozens of servants, all full of arguments, with papers to read, and if two came, there wasn’t room for the second one, and there was dust all over everything if there wasn’t mud, just from the horses. They’d trample the grass down and spoil the meadow, they’d get drunk in the great room, and their sons would be out chasing the rabbits and trying to shoot them.
    Mother had the duke of Marisyn’s sons and his servants rounded up by her guard, and Papa—my father—said if he had his choice, he was going to run away to Far Sassury and not tell anybody where he was going. But the next year, the grass would be green again and the brook would have its moss back, and it would be just us, until Papa came.”

    “No!” a feminine squeal came from the guards’ room, and several men laughed. “The scriptures is against immodesty,” the girl said,
    “an’ ye keep your nasty hands t’ yourself.”
    There were remarks below hearing, and then the girl began citing scripture: “Cursed is the flesh and the desires of it, cursed is the lustful man and the issue of his…”
    Aewyn surged up to his feet, outraged. “Hush, now, hush,” his guards were saying, wishing to keep the peace in the hall, but the undercook’s daughter was a righteous girl: so she said at every chance. Madelys was her name, she had probably come up looking for used dishes, and she was too holy for a nunnery, was what everyone said—which was why Cook thought she was proper enough to be waiting on a young lord in his own premises— and spying, meanwhile, on his household.
    It was a very furious and upset Madelys, as Aewyn faced the hall— Madelys with her serving tray and used dishes snatched under her arm and a fury on her thin face. She scarcely bobbed a curtsy as she stood there confronting him and glaring at his bodyguards.
    “Out!” Aewyn said.
    “It ain’t me!” Madelys said, with not a Your Highness nor any other grace. “It ain’t me at any fault. They was pullin’ my skirt!”
    “No one ha’ touched the lass, Your Highness.” This from his oldest guard, Selmyn, and if he had any discernment in him, or cared at the moment, this was the source of truth, far more than this surly girl.
    “Out,”