Chapter 183 Bad News

Brendan had barely come round to the side gate when he found Keane waiting there for him.

"Best go in, my lord. And — I've told the young lady the whole of it: how you're forever at the Gilded Lily, forever with the Salt brothers. No more fooling her."

That said, Keane bent his head and walked on into the compound; Brendan followed at his heels, stabbing the air behind the man's back with one finger:

"You couldn't hold your water half a month longer? Half a month, and I'd have—"

Once into the rear court, Brendan looked this way and that, caught sight of one of the inner-court maids at last, called her over in a hurry, and gave her two words of charge.

He walked into the little chapel with a smile pasted all over his face — and sure enough, there stood his sister Lora, brows level and eyes cold, the rod of household correction she'd taken out of Grandmother's keeping laid in her hands, waiting for him.

"Sister — what's this about? Where has your fourth brother given you offense?" Brendan had settled on playing the fool to the very end.

Lora pointed at the chantry wall, where the names of a dozen generations and more of Odenheims stood cut in stone:

"The ones you've offended are the forefathers. House Odenheim has climbed and fallen for a dozen generations and more to come to this day — do you think that came cheap? But for Father, who in this realm would remember Aldric of Ironhold now? You've grown bold enough to defy your own father's word — so today I'll discipline you in his place."

"All I did was dress my wound up a size — to stay home and keep Mother... and Grandmother company a while, and go back to camp after the Birth-Feast. Is that defying anybody?"

The tap-tap of a cane on the flagstones was already in his ears, and he made sure to say "and Grandmother" good and loud.

"Is that truly the whole of your plan? Then answer me this: what's the meaning of your running with the Salt brothers day in, day out?

You know well enough how many men push their bribes upward through Cedric Salt. If he wanted office for himself, he could buy a chancellorship outright — so why does he sweat laying roads for other men? Have you given that one thought?"

And that question, Lora truly had no answer for.

"He's a merchant. What he wants is trade-roads running every way at once — what would he do with a chancellorship? It's like my grandmother: she says her prayers to the Virgin day in, day out — is that so she can become a saint herself? No — it's to beg peace and smooth going for her children and grandchildren..."

"How is that even the same— ...Grandmother? What brings you here?" She hurried forward to help Grandmother in.

No wonder the brother had said "Grandmother" with every second breath! He'd gone and fetched the reinforcements.

Grandmother's court stood right beside the little chapel. The little maid he'd briefed had brought word: the fourth lord and the young lady were at each other — and if Grandmother didn't come quick, the chapel itself would be overturned.

"Lora, child... you're the younger sister. How can you go to strike your brother?"

Grandmother's eye had lit at once on the rod in Lora's hand, and she scolded:

"With your mother living and your grandmother living, how can you take the household discipline upon yourself, all on your own? And your brother has the right of it: this world is not all black and white. Some folk are selfish — that's no great crime."

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She turned then, deliberately pulling a long face for Brendan:

"Brendan — you're no chicken anymore. To loaf at home you've been crying healed as unhealed, and your mother has worn herself sick over it."

Lora could only slink over and put the rod of household correction into Grandmother's maid's hands. With Grandmother thrown into the mix, nothing more was to be said.

The good of it was, Brendan had said he'd return to camp after the Birth-Feast — which fell in exactly with Mother's plan.

And once he was back in barracks, Father would discipline him in person.

Brother and sister saw Grandmother back to her room, and parted on the rose-garden path:

"Brother — you'd best give my question some honest thought. Cedric Salt is a merchant, and no merchant rises early without a profit in view. So why does he hand you gold beads? What is it he's after?"

"Oh, I know it all. Come the new year I'm twenty by the old count — what principle under heaven have I not got? Spare yourself the worry. When you're idle, draw up your lists and see what's still wanting in your dowry — that's a young lady's proper business. Ah — one thing to ask you."

Brendan stepped in front of the departing Lora and put on a serious face:

"I have a friend — his family's fallen on hard times, and he can scarce keep his old mother in bread. Those formulas of yours — the soap, the toothpaste, the paper — could you not pick him out a simple one, let him make and sell a little, and keep his whole household alive?"

"Which friend is this? Or — shall I take him on at the iron-plate house, as a second manager?"

"Tchah! My friend is a scholar. To stand keeping another man's shop — wouldn't that disgrace the ink on his hands? It won't do... Ah — the seasoning formulas the iron-plate house uses, then. Those would serve."

Lora pushed his arm away and scoffed: "Can't feed his family, but dies of pride all the same. Then let the whole household starve with him."

Brendan watched her back and muttered: "Stingy! And I don't believe for a moment you thought all that up yourself."

With all that writhing and wriggling of his, the plain talk she'd meant to give him had gone clean out of reach. Hah — she'd stolen the rod for nothing, and never so much as landed him two strokes with it.

All the same, Lora set Keane to find out whether her fourth brother truly had any such lettered friend.

Of the people about her now, only Josiah Waite and Tobias had their letters, and she was still looking for one more — a man who could set in order all the techniques she spoke of and drew.

But two days on, Keane came back: there was no such "friend" anywhere about the fourth lord.

"So either somebody's been at him, egging him on to fetch them formulas — or he means to trade them for money himself. Well — only half a month now. When he's back in barracks, I'll write my second brother and have him trimmed down to size!"

Half a month can be a long stretch — long enough for the moon to change its face once, long enough for Harper Hale to come back to Lohenheim with a small bag of cotton seed.

The two Hales had gone the rounds of every mansion they could remember growing White Floss, on the plea of the roses' wintering-over care — and even so, the seed they'd gathered was pitiful little.

Leon had called it right: most households wanted no white flowers planted in their gardens. Even the white rose, some folk held for an ill omen.

He came back with his cotton seed on a day Lora happened to be at the Baron's mansion too.

For Dickon Carver had come, his face one long worry, bringing the rice seedlings in his basket to show his lord:

"Most of the seedlings in the field have gone like these. The few that sprouted are yellow and spindly — one puff of wind and down they go."

Now that was bad news in earnest.

Harper Hale took them and looked them over: "Wouldn't this be the soil failing?"

"But this rice grows anywhere at all in the Kingdom of Southland — the farmers there call it the least particular of rices. Though — I did bring a sack of the soil back with me. It's in your plant room, my lord."

Arran hurried out and carried the hemp sack in.

Hale and Dickon Carver each took up a fistful to look at. The color of it ran faintly red — a sour red earth, and very far from Lohenheim's soil indeed.

Lora frowned, and could not make it sit: back in the modern day, the old Dukes of Milan had grown rice in their own lands — in the Po valley, in the north of Italy. How should it fail here in Lohenheim?

But one sack of soil — spread as dressing over the fields, it wouldn't go far enough to matter.

Dickon Carver kept running the soil through his fingers, a fistful at a time. He could not resign himself to it.

But the soil was finite, and the seed was finite — one trial ate three pounds, and with no plan of betterment in hand, he dared not propose sowing over again.

Lora's mind went to the modern world's nursery cups — wouldn't those let this one sack of native soil be used all in one place?

Modern nursery cups were mostly plastic. Fire a fleet of little ceramic pots, then? The season would never wait for that.

The little live channel of the garden went plink-plink; the wind went shoosh through the leaves. Lora thought of the Yewholm where Leon had lodged in the Grand Princess's mansion — and all at once she smiled.

While their eyes were turned elsewhere, she stole one forefinger out and poked it into Leon's unsmiling cheek, and said under her breath:

"Smile. I've thought of something."