Page 8 of Beyond

In practice, with a thousand children there, it was barely organized chaos, in which older children ruled the younger, and abuse was common.

The moment that Kordas had discovered Isla’s brother had been lying sick and alone for days was the moment Kordas had vowed to himself that no child of his was ever going to be sent into Imperial care.

Pain in his jaw made him realize he was grinding his teeth—as he often did when he thought about the Emperor and the Imperial Court.

I’m nothing to them, and as long as things stay that way, my family and my people are safe.

The problem was, he knew very well that could change overnight.

I need to check with Jonaton tomorrow. Maybe his answer will be different this time. Jonaton was so close …

I’m clenching my jaw again. Time for bed. Today had been good. Perhaps tomorrow would be better.

aldemar kept “farmer’s hours,” even at the Ducal level, which disconcerted Imperial visitors a great deal. Breakfast was nearly at dawn, and was the biggest meal of the day.

The Great Hall of an Imperial-gift manor was meant for holding massive audiences, ceremonies, and enormous celebrations. It was not meant to be used as Kordas used it: as the communal eating-room.

In an Imperial-style Court, the people of rank ate together in a pleasant, well-lit dining room, while the servants and commoners ate in a larger, windowless, basement room off the kitchen. That was the room that Kordas’s grandfather had cut up into kitchen-staff rooms.

The Great Hall at Valdemar was set up with trestle tables and benches around the clock, and had never, to Kordas’s knowledge, been used as anything but an eating space. Kordas’s father had partially solved the heating problem by suspending a kind of cloth “ceiling” at about the height where a normal ceiling would be, made of painted sailcloth covered in images of stars, moons, and suns against a dark blue background. Kordas had no idea what things looked like above that cloth ceiling these days. It’s probably the home to about a million spiders at this point, he mused as he entered the room.

There was the difference between the High Tables, where people other than the servants and commoners ate, and the rest of the hall. There were no cloth coverings on the common tables; people had to pick up their own pieces of trencher-bread as they came in; they needed to bring their own cups, spoons, and knives; and they served themselves out of bowls and platters placed at intervals along the tables. When those were emptied, someone at the table was expected to fetch more from a table along the side of the room. At the High Tables, there were tablecloths, plates, cups, knives, and spoons, and people were served individually by the pages. Not by the youngest ones, who were still in training, and could not be expected to carry heavy bowls and platters of food, but by the ones in their last year of page-duty, at which point they would become squires. About half the pages were from the households of the lords of his manors. Not because he was holding them hostage, as the Emperor did, but to ensure their educations in being gentlemen. The pages were exclusively male. Little girls were expected to be trained in their own households by mothers or senior servants in the duties that were the traditional purviews of women. There might have been exceptions to this, but Kordas didn’t know any. There were rarely female squires—he had three—but they had come to him at the express request of their parents, for martial training as knights.

Kordas did not enter at the main doors to the Great Hall as most people did; he came through a smaller door up at the end of the Hall where the High Tables were. There he stood, just within the shadows of the doorway, and took a moment to look over the people who served him—and whom he, in his own turn, served.

Isla had gotten up this morning before he had; she was already in the middle seat of the main High Table, with Delia on the other side of her, both of them involved in a lively conversation that involved a lot of knife-waving. Hakkon was on the other side of Kordas’s empty chair, keeping a sharp eye on the pages and administering quiet corrections if they made mistakes.

It was Hakkon that Kordas’s gaze lingered on; Hakkon was the Seneschal, and according to Imperial custom, the highest-ranking person in Kordas’s household. Technically, he even outranked Isla. Kordas had depended on him for decades, and Hakkon simply didn’t have it in him to let Kordas down.

It would have been very easy, back in those days when Kordas was a hostage in the Imperial Court, for Hakkon to have eliminated Kordas by simple neglect. It was possible for bastards to succeed to a title; it just needed the Emperor’s approval, and that probably would not have been hard to get. Had Hakkon lusted for the Ducal coronet, the opportunity to snatch it had been right there.

But he had never been anything other than Kordas’s faithful protector and advisor. He had never even once given Kordas bad advice.

No one would ever have guessed that Hakkon was Kordas’s cousin; Hakkon was still tall and strong and muscled like a muleteer; he didn’t allow himself the “belly drift” of most courtiers. His hair and impressive beard were a startling white-blond, and he kept both in neat braids.

He never missed anything—perhaps as a result of being Kordas’s watchdog for so long; even though Kordas was still in the shadows of the doorway, his cousin spotted him, and signaled with his eyebrows and a tilt of his head toward the empty seat.

Kordas acknowledged him with a nod, and made his way through the bowing pages to join his family.

“Well?” Hakkon asked, as he took his seat.

“Well, the foaling was successful thanks to Delia, plus there was a second Sweetfoot born last night. I gave Delia the Gold foal because she earned it, so she will be starting her filly’s early training today, and yes, please put Restil in the pages, he’s old enough.” Having gotten that out of the way, he turned to his breakfast, listening in to Delia and Isla’s conversation. As he had expected, it was about Delia’s filly, who apparently had been named “Daystar.” Isla was giving her advice on the filly’s early training, and Delia was doing more listening than talking. Kordas buttered some bread with a broad knife imprinted with the white and blue winged horse of Valdemar, and turned back to Hakkon.

“I expect to hear from the Emperor that he wants his tribute quite soon,” he continued, “since the fact that I was doing my own foaling last night is bound to come to his ears as a hilarious anecdote.”

Hakkon snorted. “I don’t know how you put up with being thought a clown. I’d have broken some noses over it if I was in your shoes.” Then he laughed. “So it’s just as well I never wanted your shoes.”

“I put up with it by reminding myself constantly that it’s better to be thought a clown and be dismissed as harmless than to be a target for the Emperor’s suspicions. The more of a fool he thinks I am, the less likely he is to think of me at all.” He shrugged. “Anything you need to tell me about the pages, the squires, or the state of the Duchy?” All the servants ultimately reported to Hakkon, and were given their orders by him. The various lords of the other fourteen Valdemar manors also reported directly to him. He was in charge of the Exchequer, who managed the Treasury, the Housekeeper and Head Cook, and of course the pages and squires.

“Squire Brianta. I want her placed with a knight. She’s more than ready for the position, but you don’t have any lady-knights here,” Hakkon told him. “What do you want to do?”

That was a good question. Who am I certain enough of to trust a female squire to? Wait …

“You don’t have a squire at present,” he pointed out.

“I …don’t,” Hakkon admitted, after hesitating a moment. “That’s not a bad thought.”

“Is she smart enough to consider training for a Seneschal position?” he persisted. “Two birds, one stone, as it were.”