Ketha's Daughter

Chapter one-1

Chapter one

Lutyond’s LeviathanAn old woman sits by a fireplace, and rattles a skin pouch filled with round stones, worn smooth by the action of the waves on the beach. She closes her eyes and places her hand inside, then stares at the stone she retrieves. It has been carefully incised with a stylized iceberg symbol.

Turning to her companion, who also sits close to the warmth of the fire, she says — Look, Hieronymus, it is Lutyond’s Leviathan.[i] That means Raven is on the move at last.

* * * *

“No! I am not going and that is final. You cannot make me, Mother, and you know it. So why do you continue to argue?” Gwenn Benet angrily stamped her booted foot and glared at her mother.

Katkin sighed. The girl was right — she could not force Gwenn to do anything she did not want to do. She tried to reason with her stubborn daughter. “Listen, Gwenn. I have been Queen for sixteen years, far longer than I originally thought I would have to keep the position. Beaumarais does not need me anymore. The country is at peace with all her neighbors and trade is more profitable than ever. What is more, your father...”

Gwenn interrupted sarcastically, “My what? Call him Jacq. He means nothing to me.”

The Queen gave her an angry glance. “Jacq, then. I promised him many years ago I would not stay in the City any longer than I had to. I know he is weary of being the Queen’s consort, Gwenn. He does not complain, but I see the unhappiness in his eyes. It is time for us to move to the country and go back to the life he loves best. He has been more than patient.”

“And you expect me to give up being a Princess, and go and live in some disgusting... hovel in the back of beyond just so you can make him happy? Why should I? I like it here in the Citadel, with Jessamine and the rest of my friends.” Gwenn’s stormy expression left Katkin little doubt her carefully rehearsed arguments had fallen on deaf ears.

“Acorn is not a hovel. You saw that for yourself when we rode out there last week. When I instructed my men to rebuild the house your father... I mean, Jacq, and I used to live in, I told them to expand and refurbish it. They even added indoor plumbing.”

Gwenn gave her mother a withering look. “Indoor plumbing? My Gods, Mother, get a grip on yourself. Why did you not have Tintaren Manor rebuilt instead? That might be a decent place to live.”

“Tintaren Manor burned down long ago, and I don’t have any desire to live in my family’s old mansion anyway. My father made his fortune by exploiting the cottars who worked for us. How would it look if I retired and took up residence there? It is out of the question. Anyway, I have already had Acorn rebuilt as a surprise for Jacq, and I intend to tell him tomorrow at your birthday banquet. I know he will be pleased.”

“Are you planning to tell him any other secrets?” Gwenn said poisonously. “I know one which would not please him at all.”

Katkin took a deep breath, determined to keep her temper in check now Gwenn had begun her favorite game. She said, firmly, “That is in the past and it needs to stay there.”

“Oh yes, my Mother, and it will, as long as I get what I want. And what I want is to stay here in St. Valery.” Gwenn looked at her mother and Katkin felt a sudden urge to slap the sneer from her face. Still, she did nothing.

“If you could stay here and go to school, as I did in my younger days, then I would not mind. Since you have managed to get yourself thrown out of every educational institution in St. Valery that is not possible. What happened at the last one? Beating up the headmaster, was it not?”

Gwenn’s sneer turned into a pout. “Because I threatened to slice up that awful François Besson after he tried to kiss me, the headmaster took my sword away and told me to go to my room. Faugh! I challenged him to a duel and he laughed at me. I had to crush him; my honor was at stake.”

“You have been listening to too many of Jacq’s tales. Young ladies are not supposed to behave like warriors. What am I going to do with you?”

“You are not going to do anything with me. I don’t have to listen to you. Ketha says...”

Katkin felt her grip on her temper slipping. “Leave that venomous snake out of this conversation. None of this would have happened if not for her.”

“What do you mean, Mother? Ketha is my best friend in the whole world. She has given me powers you can only dream of.”

“She has made you quarrelsome and unkind and I rue the day I ever let you near her. But that, too, is in the past and I cannot change it. Now listen to me, and listen well. You are going to leave St. Valery and move to the country with me and Jacq, and that is final.” Katkin held her daughter’s intense blue eyes in a challenging stare.

“No! Stop ordering me about or I will tell him the truth.” Gwenn gave a satisfied smile, sure this threat, which had served her so well in the past, would come to her defense again. This time her mother surprised her.

“Go ahead and tell him,” Katkin said bitterly. I have lived with that secret for sixteen years. I am too tired to fight any more.”

She thought back to the day long ago when Gwenn had come to her, full of questions, carrying a braid of blond and chestnut hair carefully twined together and tied with a ribbon. Katkin had hidden it away in the bottom of a locked chest in her personal dressing room, and she had no doubt the troublemaking Keth Dirane had sent the girl to find it. The blond hair woven into the braid belonged to Captain Tomas de Vigny — Gwenn’s true father. Katkin had once allowed him to make love to her, in return for a visit with her incarcerated husband, Jacq Benet. Unbeknownst to her, Tomas later made the braid — using a lock of her hair wound together with his — as a memento of the assignation that created Gwenn. Jacq knew nothing of Gwenn’s true parentage, of course. Katkin had sworn on the heart of the Goddess Lalluna she would never tell him, on the day Tomas de Vigny died.

“Fine, maybe I will!” Gwenn snapped back. “Then you will be sorry.”

“So will you, one day,” Katkin spoke quietly now, with regret. “Jacq loves you so much. I only wish he felt as proud of Tristan as he does of you.”

“Of course he is proud of me. Even if he is not my real father, I am still the true heir of the Dinrhydan[ii], the greatest swordsman in the history of Beaumarais. That baby Tristan cannot come close. Ketha made me strong, and Jacq taught me the ways of the warrior. There is no man who could vanquish me now.”

Katkin wearily shook her head. “Such skills belong to a different time. Now the world is at peace. When will you understand that?”

“Ketha speaks of a place where the accomplishments of the warrior are still valued, and someday soon I am going there. I will have such power, no-one will tell me what to do, ever again.” She gave her mother a meaningful glance. “I will make you pay dearly for all your lies.” With this, she turned and ran from the room. Katkin watched her go. After brushing the tears from her eyes, she called for her equerry to ready her pony, Alys.

* * * *

As Gwenn strode through the Citadel passages on her way to the blacksmith’s shop, Ketha’s voice echoed hollowly in her mind. “Are you going to tell him our secret? You said you would.” She sounded hopeful. As Gwenn stepped on to the grassy parade fields, she paused to admire a detachment of Queen’s Guard practicing close order drilling. She spoke out loud, though there was no-one near her.

“No, of course not. I love Jacq, even if he is not my real father. He is the only one who understands me. Not like her. I hate my mother!”

“You told your mother he meant nothing to you.” Ketha’s disappointment sounded plainly in her voice.

“I just said that to make her angry.” Gwenn sighed. “I suppose I will actually have to do as she says this time.”

“When are you going to learn, my dear? You must not allow your mother to dictate to you. That is not the way to freedom, child. Make her pay, Gwenn, as you threatened. Let us leave tonight, and make our way north. You can make new friends there, friends with real power. Later we can come back and crush her, as you have always wanted. Then we can have Jacq all to ourselves.”

Gwenn listened to this in surprise. Had she always wanted to crush her mother? If Ketha said so, she supposed it had to be true.

She came in to the blacksmith shop and greeted her stepfather cheerfully. Jacq grinned at her as he hammered a red-hot horseshoe. Gwenn had been helping in the smithy since she was just a little thing, barely big enough to lift the heavy metal implements. Now she watched with interest, ready with the tongs to plunge the finished shoe into the cold water. Jacq nodded to her when it was ready and the shoe joined the others in the bucket with a brief hiss of boiling water and steam.

Jacq labored at the Citadel ironworks several days a week, making horseshoes or other handcrafted metal implements as needed. Of course, as the Queen’s consort, he did not really have to work at all, but it made him feel useful to be making things with his hands. He felt very proud of his famous wife, who had saved the City from certain annihilation when she became the Avatar of Lalluna. Though she had been terribly maimed in her efforts to heal Hythea, the volcano Goddess, and now had only one arm, Jacq still thought her as beautiful as the day they met. Then she had been six years old and he ten. He had never loved another woman, could not even imagine it, until his little girl had been born and stolen his heart. Of course, he loved his son Tristan as well, but the boy could not compete with Gwenn, who shared Jacq’s fascination with sword fighting.

They toiled together in companionable silence for a few moments and then she asked, “Do you have any swords to work on today, Jacq?”

He shook his head and she sighed regretfully. This use of his first name no longer troubled him, for she had been calling him that a few years now, for some reason he could not fathom. Katkin had assured him their daughter was just going through a phase and would grow out of it — but she had not.

“Are you almost finished?” she asked him eagerly. “Let’s go practice for a while. I think I almost had you yesterday, you know. If only I had done a half turn to the left instead of the right, you would have been at my mercy.”

“Of course we can. And you may turn whichever way takes your fancy today,” he added drily. Jacq smiled and placed his sledgehammer with the other tools on the rack above the workbench. Though he had more work to do, he always made time for Gwenn and her sword fighting lessons. He began teaching her the day she showed an interest in his long, two-handed sword, d’angwir,[iii] when she was six years old. Over her mother’s strenuous objections, he had forged a tiny blunt-tipped metal blade for her. She had taken to swordplay with such determination and skill he continued to make her weapons as she grew and they spent many hours a week practicing. Other than tumbling, it was her only interest. Certainly, school had not held her attention, but that did not bother Jacq at all.

“But wait a moment. I have something to give you first.”

He walked back to a dark corner of the smithy, behind the big forge, and returned with a long, bulky object wrapped in a dirty cloth. This present had taken him six months to make, and in it he had placed all the love and pride he felt in his heart for his warrior daughter.

Gwenn looked baffled as he handed over the bundle. He said, “I know your birthday isn’t until tomorrow, but I want you to open this now, in private.” Jacq smiled and shrugged sheepishly. “Your mother wouldn’t understand, and I did not want there to be an argument at the banquet.”

She unwrapped his present eagerly and gasped at the contents. There, in her hands, lay the most beautifully worked sword she had ever seen. Her stepfather had executed every detail impeccably, from the finely shaped damascened steel blade, to the wrist guard made of twisted gold and silver wire with inset jewels. Gwenn held it up to the light, a look of wonder on her face as she admired the detailed engraving that flashed with glints of fire from the forge.