Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 Read Online Free PDF

clothes-press.
    Now he found himself wondering why he had ever thought he could spare an afternoon to leave the fortress and ride outside the walls.
    But Earl Crissand had pleaded with him and cajoled him to take some relief from the demands on his attention. He had a need and a duty, Crissand said, to see the people and be seen by them, a duty he could not accomplish inside the fortress. The ducal seat at Henas’amef had become remote and estranged from the commons even under its recent duke and duchess, and the last Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
    authority, Lord Parsynan, had brought the land nothing but grief and bloodshed. It was time the people saw hope for better days.
    So here they were, he and his guard all cloaked and gloved and equipped for winter riding—an unexpectedly appropriate weight of clothing for venturing the tower room—bound for the west doors and the stable-court. The escape seemed both more attractive and less responsible since the conversation above; and he only hoped to reach the stables.
    All through the lower hall the household staff with mops and buckets fought back the thin gloss of mud soldiers and workmen brought from the snowy yard. And around the central doors, that mud mixed with the shavings and dust of workmen repairing the damages of their new lord’s accession. It was a second source of draft in the fortress, where wind leaked through the nailed patches, and it was a hazard to his escape, a source of overseers with questions.
    He foresaw it: now a well-dressed master craftsmen intersected his path and showed him a paper, the requests of craftsmen for an order of oak planks.
    Consult Tassand, was his answer to no few. He was sure his chief of household knew no more about oak planks than he did about wizardry and herb lore—less, in fact—but Tassand at least knew how to send petitioners to appropriate places. From being merely a body servant, Tassand had become a duke’s master of household, did the office of chamberlain and half the office of seneschal.

    Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
    Tassand seemed to know, moreover, when an order was excessive or excessively expensive, which his lord did not. He did know that money represented hours and quality of a man’s work, and that dukes did not have an endless supply of it.
    But today, faced with an order for wood which seemed reasonable for carpenters, and anxious to reach the doors: “Yes,”
    he said, and moved on. “Yes,” he said, to a further request, and he had no more than sent that man off, than a third man in court clothes appeared in his path, unrolling drawings of the carvings of the new main doors, and asking whether the design pleased him.
    “The Eagle of Amefel in the center panel, do you see, Your Grace, and the border of oak leaves, for endurance…”
    He had no idea why he should be asked about the carving for the main doors, which he had simply ordered repaired to stop the draft. The only usefulness of the carving might be a kind of magical seal, and everyone from earls to servants to his close friends had assumed that common doors would not do… nothing common ever suited. Endurance seemed a reasonable, a happy wish, to which he certainly consented, and with a wish of his own he reinforced it… he helped the craftsmen as he could, not knowing what he was supposed to do.
    But by now he was sure he was overdue in the stable-court, and he was more and more sure Crissand was right in urging him to ride out for a day: he grew weary and short of patience. His court Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
    did everything in a great deal of fuss and uncertainty, and questions seemed to come to him faster than he could learn.
    Wishes for solutions aside, he had not enough officers, not enough servants, no clear lines of appeal—and, as Tassand had informed him, unhappily there was no other person established as the authority. What had existed, Parsynan and Edwyll between them had