Chapter 158 Gifts

Lora came flying over in leaps and bounds, threw her arms tight round her mother, and burst into tears on the spot: "Mother — how could you be gone so long? Yvonne missed you to death!" Roland poked the fire from the side: "Mother — you said you'd scold her when you got back. Don't let it slip your mind." The Countess gave Roland one flat smack: "Scold, scold — never mind scolding. Off with you and your men this minute! A whole herd of guards planted at the young lady's gate — what sort of picture is that?" For getting them scolded, Lora twisted round to look at Corin. He was following Shawn out, calm as you please; passing her side, he gave her one sly wink, nothing showing on his face. "Good day, my lady." Faye, coming face to face with her future mother-in-law, felt her heart leap clean to her throat; she got out a hasty dry laugh: "Yvonne — the Countess is back, so I'll be off now. Next time, I'll come see you again." Brendan and Carl both looked curiously after her and Garnet, running off like they'd sprouted wings. Carl asked: "Whose house's young lady is that? Never seen her before." "She's called Faye Horn, a friend I made in Yorvik. Third brother set a little property in Yorvik, and her father manages it for us now." "What nonsense. Yorvik is a world away — what business buying property out there? Better to put the money to redeeming our farms." The Countess said it with no approval at all. Only on the road home had she learned how Webb and Susannah, one after the other, had carried off the gold and silver of the family treasury, and the deeds to five private farms with them — stolen her very seal into the bargain. Those five farms had gone into pledge, papers all in order, and there was no fetching them back. It had wrung her heart for days on end. Thank heaven for the sons about her to comfort her. Alvin had told his mother too, how soon he would be off to the Falconberg march as deputy commander — to give her something else to hold her mind. "Mother — say what you like, our own forefather was invested Warden of Yorvik; half his great deeds were won out in the northeast. The Odenheims have some strength in hand now — going back to Yorvik to set property is no more than right and fitting. And besides, what Roland bought was land at the sea's edge; he has already applied to the authorities for a salt-pan. Official salt — the margins run thin, maybe, but it's all profit and no loss." Lora explained it with her arm round her mother's shoulder. That day she had set the reason before her father, and the old man's eyes had gone red at the rim, and "good, good" was all he could say. She and Brendan and Carl saw her mother in to her rooms. Out of Mother's door, and only then did Carl bare his teeth and claws at Lora: "I'm not so easy to soothe as Mother — crying won't serve. Out with it: how do you mean to make it up to me? Three whole months I worried over you." "Oh come now — what are we, you and me? Like a pair of conjoined twins — do we keep books that fine?" Lora hung fondly on her fifth brother's arm and towed him off toward the little study. "What's a 'conjoined twin'?" "Means the two of us have been stuck together every day since the day we were born." "No we weren't. These months, we came apart." Brendan, barely inside the city gates, had heard from his second brother the one vexing item: Father meant to raise their rank — his dream of leaving the army was dead and buried. Next month, he and Carl would be following along to Thornford. And what was there in broken-down Thornford? Dull past all words. One look at Lora and his fifth brother — he had no mind to tag along; he turned and walked off toward his own courtyard. Lora suddenly remembered her fourth brother, and called back over her shoulder: "Fourth brother — aren't you coming? Your gift is already in your room." Carl clamped fast the hand Lora had slipped under his arm, and grinned: "I brought you a gift back from Augustburg too. Wait a bit — I'll get it from Little An." Watching Carl run to fetch the bundle from a page's hands, Lora felt a small twist of regret. There was nothing much worth buying in the north country anyway — and they'd tumbled into so much trouble besides — so what she'd brought her three brothers was Grey Wolf blades all, only the styles a little different one from another. And her fifth brother's she hadn't even taken the trouble to pick out. Some conjoined twin he'd turned out to be. Carl came over with the bundle — two boxes in it by the shape, one big, one small: "Come on — the little study, and let's see." In the little study, Carl looked his Grey Wolf blade over in satisfaction; Lora opened the brocade box, and nearly laughed out loud: What was this but a transparent glass bottle — and none too well made at that? She lifted the narrow-necked, round-bellied thing out with three fingers, and Carl hurried to say: "Careful — don't break it! This is a rarity out of the Western Regions, called a glass bottle. Think of it: carried all those miles to Augustburg — the jolts and knocks of the road aside, foul weather beating on it, and highwaymen to meet — every bottle that reaches Augustburg whole is worth a thousand gold." Lora tilted her head at it, then stole one look at the fierce autumn sun outside the window — and the idea came. She carried the bottle to the washbasin, filled it brimming with water, caught her brother's sleeve, and drew him out the door: "Brother — watch this. I can light dry grass with this glass bottle." "Eh? It can do that?" A round glass bottle filled with water is, in plain fact, a convex lens; a convex lens gathers light to fire — every kindergartner of the modern world knows it. The two of them squatted down on the ground like children again. Lora set that bright burning point of light on a pinch of dry grass — and in a little while, sure enough, smoke rose, and a small flame crept out. "It really lights! Fire without a fire-stick — it's a miracle." Carl was honestly delighted. Anyone else who'd come by this treasured glass bottle would have set it out on a desk or a shelf, to be looked at; his sister could turn it to making fire. Talk about a mind that thinks outside the box. "To light fire with a glass bottle you need it brimming with clear water, and you need the sunlight besides. The fire-stick's still the handier thing." Lora giggled, quenched the fire on the ground with the water, hugged the bottle to her breast, and ran back inside: "Now let's see — what's the other treasure?" "If the glass bottle's beneath your fancy, that thing won't catch your eye either." "What's this?" Lora picked out of the box a pearl the size of an egg. "A luminous pearl, tribute out of Byzantium. I begged it out of Prince Jasper's household. It came to me on the spot — you can't ever have seen one — and I got it back for you to play with." Who'd have thought it: the glass bottle beneath her, and the luminous pearl — for that she was all fire. She clasped it in her palm, shut one eye, and pressed the other to the chink between her fingers, peering in, muttering away: "So luminous pearls really exist — call that an education. And me thinking everything the books wrote about 'luminous pearls' was humbug — just glowing fluorite and no more. Whoa. Really whoa..." Seeing his sister so taken, Carl split his own grin from ear to ear, past all containing. He opened the other gift his sister had given him, picked up the toothbrush, and asked, curious: "Eh? What's this?" "Oh — that's our household's own four-piece wash set. This thing here is called a toothbrush; the little glass vial holds the toothpaste. Pick a little up on the brush, wet it in water, and it scours the teeth clean as clean." "And what's this paper — all crumpled and wrinkled?" Carl held up a roll of straw-yellow paper from the box and asked. "That's straw paper. We make it at East Manor from grass — the method's simple, the stuff of it nothing but dry grass, and it's cheap as dirt. It can stand in for the privy-stick and the privy-silk. This block here is called soap — it washes cleaner than the old bath-beans, and it can be made by the great batch. Straw paper and soap — even the common folk can afford them both. Only — in the gift-boxed soap I've put scent in, and that runs the price up." "Lora — that small skull of yours holds a deal too much. These things are good; every soul alive has need of them. Only — everyday stuff like this, why dress it up in a gift box, as if it were some great treasure?" Lora laughed, pleased with herself: "There's where you're out of your depth. The toothbrush isn't worn out yet, and the toothpaste's gone — so off you go to buy toothpaste. When the toothbrush does wear out, there's toothpaste left over — so off you go to buy a toothbrush. The soap lasts longest of all, two bars to a set, two different flower-scents — and to work honestly through one whole set takes a month, or two. The straw paper's a scant bit, thrown in for a free sample — use it, like it, and they'll come back buying our straw paper by the bale." "Well now! Round and round you lead them, till there's no living without your wash box." So Carl admired. "At Harvest Home, Faye's dress-up doll shop opens — and our fine wash boxes will sit on sale right there in her shop." Carl spread his two hands and gave it up with a sigh: "And then the word runs round both capitals: the old Odenheim house cleaned out by its own house-thieves, and the young lady driven to earning her bread by her own two hands!" "Hmph! Don't want it, then — give it here." "Why would I give it back? I want it..."