Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (20 page)

“Are you my father’s queen?” Adria asked Matron Taber during her next monthly interview.

The Matriarch did not answer at first, but allowed a long moment of silence — as was often her way of conversing with Adria, or with anyone. Unlike with her father, it rarely seemed a thoughtful silence, but one which Taber maintained as a rule. In fact, Adria had developed the habit of silently counting during this space, and normally reached between eight and ten, no matter how simple the question or the answer.

Occasionally, Adria would frame another question as soon as she reached seven, or merely repeat the first one, just to see if the count would start over. But then, Taber always answered promptly. This time, Adria only reached four before Taber responded.

“Where did you hear such a notion?” She asked in response, her eyes watching Adria closely but without emotion. She had stopped writing on the parchment upon her desk, tilting her quill a little to be certain the ink would not pool upon the tip.

Suddenly, Adria was a little afraid to answer, wondering if the conversation that had prompted it should be a secret she and Father shared. Their game was no one else’s concern, she realized at once. She might have lied, then, but everyone knew Taber could tell the truth from a lie, always. Instead, she avoided the answer altogether.

“My father has no other queen,” Adria reasoned. “And you command the Sisterhood.”

“Is this your own idea,” Taber rephrased. “Or that of another?”

Adria had not realized what a difficult subject this would be, when the question seemed so simple, and might have needed only a nod or a shake of the head in response — though of course this would never be a response from Taber. Taber always used words instead of motion.

In fact, Adria realized, Taber never used her eyes or her limbs for anything but the most basic necessities — walking, eating, and watching everyone carefully. Adria had been hoping for answers, and now her own answers were far more important, and yet she could not understand why.

“It is my own.” Anyone else would have used a term of respect when answering or asking questions of Taber. Adria never did, and Taber never used one for Adria in return, at least when they were alone. Neither had ever questioned this aloud, nor had anyone else. It was a privilege only Adria, Hafgrim, Father, and Taber shared with one another. Adria did not mistake it for more than it was, still. It was not necessarily a sign of affection.

“Do you know,” Taber began, in the voice she used for teaching — unlike the other Sisters, it was not a voice intended only for a child. She used this voice with Sister, King, and child alike. “That many of the people who inhabited Heiland before us worshiped a goddess and not a god?”

Inhabited
, Adria tested the word a little on her lips before answering. “The Aeman ship-builders?”

That was all Adria could recall from her lessons that might fit the question. They had lived on islands to the east, as well as along the coast of Heiland, and had raided the shores of Kelmantium and Somana, and sometimes each other. They had never managed to form anything as lofty as a kingdom, until settlers from Somana had eventually tamed them, and a number of smaller princedoms were formed. Adria’s father had been the one to conquer and unite these smaller nations, at last, into the Kingdom of Heiland, during the War for Union only a few years before.

“No,” Taber answered, but her voice showed that Adria’s response had not been unreasonable. “There were people here even before them. They lived along the rivers and the coast even before the Angans, the ship-builders, came. These earlier settlers have no name that we know of, and they lived in small tribes. They worshiped a woman god, and they even named their children after their mother and not their father. Isn’t that remarkable?”

Adria was not certain that this was a question for which Taber required an answer. Adria merely smiled politely in response, and this seemed to serve.

“Certainly, we consider this an oddity now, but in fact, many of the oldest cultures of the world, it is said, were similar — they were ruled by women, women served in their armies and upon their councils, and all inheritance of title, name, and fortune passed from mother to daughter...” Taber trailed off, uncharacteristically, and her eyes were distant. And then suddenly they were upon Adria again, with a real question. “Can you see any benefit in such a way of life?”

Adria hesitated, and Taber noticed this, and nodded dismissively. “Perhaps you are too young, after all?”

It was not a mocking tone, but Adria did not approve of it, nonetheless. She could not remember how the conversation had turned this way, to a simple history lesson, when she had really only been speaking of chess. Perhaps she should have mentioned the game, after all. Still, she rallied herself for the best answer she could find. When she had it, she shook her head, to answer the more recent question.

“Then you have an answer?” Taber asked.

Adria nodded, hoping to annoy Taber by not answering until specifically asked again. But Taber alone among the Sisterhood seemed immune to Adria’s goading.

“And what is your answer?”

Adria took a long breath. “When a child is born, it is known who the mother is, though not always certain who the father is.”

Taber responded after only two counts, “Exactly.”

After three more counts, “And how do you know this, at such a young age? Has one of the servants spoken of the nature of birth?”

Adria shook her head.

Taber watched closely. “Was it one of the Sisters, perhaps?” The tone for this question was clear — it was obviously something that was not to be discussed with Adria.

Again, Adria shook her head. She would make the Matriarch ask.

Taber nodded again, and perhaps there was some hint of annoyance. “Then how is it that you know this?”

Adria took another breath, and answered in her own tone of annoyance, as if she were teaching Taber something she should already have known. “When a child is born, the mother remains within the room, and the father without. A child grows within the mother, and will be born even if the father is gone away, or even dead.”

Adria knew of such stories. Her own governess, Kaye, had given birth to her daughter after her husband had been slain in war. The daughter, Twyla, had taken some of her first lessons with Adria, and was often still brought along so the girls could play.

After a moment, Taber asked another question, and Adria at last began to understand what the Matriarch was trying to teach her.

“So how can a child know who her father is at all?”

Adria hesitated, suddenly unsure what her responses might mean, and half hoping Taber was on the verge of sharing a secret. She knew she must be careful.

“She can be told by the mother,” Adria half-whispered.

“And if the mother is dead, or has abandoned her child, and told no one else of the father?” Taber continued. “How can the child know then?”

“If the father tells the child.”

“But then, might not any man claim to be the father of a child, in the absence of the mother?”

Adria was struck silent. This part she had not considered, and now, Adria saw the full point of Taber’s questions, or at least suspected she did. Adria had seen just enough of the game to realize she was being played with.

A long silence followed, with the two of them only watching each other. Finally, Adria regained some of her will, sighed, and smiled.

“If a father claims his child, then who can prove otherwise, in the absence of the mother? And who would have the right to challenge such a claim?”

It wasn’t exactly a victory, and Adria knew it. But maybe it was a stalemate. Anyway, Adria was intent on keeping her mobility. But to her surprise, Taber only smiled pleasantly, another rare expression, and she rose from her seat to gaze through the curtained window.

“You see the difficulty we have, in the Sisterhood, of recording the lineage of the families of Heiland.” Taber pulled the gold-embroidered violet curtain aside — A warm day, a blue sky. How Adria loved to wrap herself within similar curtains, on cold days, and watch the world from her window. A mountain hawk cried, and Adria started, then immediately reddened, though Taber’s back was to her, and she surely had not seen.

Taber’s voice was quiet now, and Adria could barely make it out. “The benefit of motherhood cannot be overstated. A man may accept or deny a child, but it is the woman who decides the father, always.”

Another long silence, and when Taber turned back to Adria, her face was pleasant and calm. The lesson had ended, and still Adria was uncertain of what really had been said. She knew that words could hide as well as reveal, and could change their meaning rather easily.

Adria felt she had to make one final display, and her voice rang with pride as she spoke, at last, what seemed like a victorious proclamation.

“Father has taught me chess,” she smiled.

Taber considered her for a full count of ten before replying.

“Games are for kings and for children,” she said, and dismissed Adria without another word.

Adria was still smiling as the door closed behind her. “And am I not a child?”

Soon after her exchange with Matron Taber, Father gifted Adria with her own board and pieces — smaller, but crafted just as beautifully as his own. She practiced by herself for awhile, in the absence of her father, until the desire for an opponent overwhelmed her.

Twyla was uninterested in such things, and Kaye had no time for it, and so Adria spirited Hafgrim away from the other boys conspiratorially, as if she had some secret to share.

Unfortunately, he did not take to the game as well as either of them might have liked.

“It’s like fighting a war,” she offered hopefully as she arrayed their armies. “Each piece moves differently and has its own use, just like in a real army.”

This idea seemed to interest him, but then, when the pace of the game turned out to be rather unlike the type of sport he was used to, he grew sullen and distracted, and no amount of Adria’s inducement could focus him on the board for long.

So, of course, he lost against Adria his first time playing, and from then on would only play against her begrudgingly.

“Games are for children, anyway,” he would sigh, unknowingly a lesser shade of the Matriarch.