Epiny herself had been well aware of that, of course. She had deliberately ruined herself, so that her mother would have no option but to accept Spink and his family’s bid for her hand. The prospect of a marriage connection with a new noble family, one with no established estates but only raw holdings on the edge of the borderlands, had filled Daraleen with both chagrin and horror. Epiny’s tactic had been ruthless, one that put her fate into her own hands, but also severed the bond between mother and daughter. I had heard Epiny’s artless little sister Purissa say that she was now her mother’s best daughter and jewel for the future. I was certain she was only repeating words she’d heard from her mother’s lips.

So when my uncle invited me to sit while he rang for a servant to bring up a light repast for us, I remained standing and said that I needed to be sure of being on time for my boat’s departure. A sour smile wrinkled his mouth.

“Nevare. Do you forget that I purchased that ticket at your father’s behest? You have plenty of time to make your boat’s sailing. The only thing you have to worry about is stopping at the bank to cash your check and get some traveling funds. Please. Sit down.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, and sat.

He rang for a servant, spoke to him briefly, and then took his own seat with a sigh. He looked at me and shook his head. “You act as if we are angry with each other. Or as if I should be angry with you.”

I looked down before his gaze. “You’d have every right to be, sir. I’m the one who brought Spink here. If I hadn’t introduced him to Epiny, none of this would ever have happened.”

He gave a brief snort of laughter. “No. Doubtless something else, equally awkward, would have happened instead. Nevare, you forget that Epiny is my daughter. I’ve known her all her life, and even if I didn’t quite realize all she was capable of, I nevertheless knew that she had an inquiring mind, an indomitable spirit, and the will to carry out any plan she conceived. Her mother might hold you accountable, but then, Epiny’s mother is fond of holding people accountable for things beyond their control. I try not to do that.”

He sounded tired and sad, and despite my guilt, or perhaps because of it, my heart went out to him. He had treated me well, almost as if I were his own son. Despite my father’s elevation to noble status, he and his elder brother had remained close. I knew that was not true of many families, where old noble heir sons regarded their “battle lord” younger brothers as rivals. Spink’s “old noble” relatives had no contact with him, and had turned a blind eye to the needs of his widowed mother. Certainly a great deal of my aunt’s distaste for me was that she perceived my father as an upstart, a new noble who should have remained a simple military officer. Many of the old nobility felt that King Troven had elevated his battle lords as a political tactic, so that he might seed the Council of Lords with recently elevated aristocrats who had a higher degree of loyalty to him and greater sympathy for his drive to expand Gernia to the east by military conquest. Possibly they were right. I settled back in my chair and tried to smile at my uncle. “I still feel responsible,” I said quietly.

“Yes, well, you are the sort of man who would. Let it go, Nevare. If I recall correctly, you did not first invite Spink to my home. Epiny did, when she saw him standing beside you at the academy that day we came to pick you up. Who knows? Perhaps that was the instant in which she decided to marry him. I would not put it beyond her. And now, since we are discussing her and Spinrek, would you tell me if you’ve heard anything from your friend? I long to know how my wayward daughter fares.”

“She has not written to you?” I asked, shocked.

“Not a word,” he said sadly. “I thought we had parted on, well, if not on good terms, at least with the understanding that I still loved her, even if I could not agree with all her decisions. But since the day she departed from my doorstep, I’ve heard nothing, from her or Spinrek.” His voice was steady and calm as he spoke, but the hollowness he felt came through all the same. I felt an instant spurt of anger toward Epiny. Why was she treating her father so coldly?

“I have received letters not just from Spink, but also from Epiny. I will be happy to share them with you, sir. I have them with me, among my books and other papers in Sirlofty’s pack.”

Hope lit in his eyes, but he said, “Nevare, I couldn’t ask you to betray any confidences Epiny has made to you. If you would just tell me that she is well…”

“Nonsense!” Then I remembered to whom I spoke. “Uncle Sefert, Epiny has written me pages and pages, a veritable journal since the day she left your door. I have read nothing there that I’d hesitate to tell you, so why should you not read her words for yourself? Let me fetch them. It will only take a moment.”

I saw him hesitate, but he could not resist, and at his nod I hastened down the stairs. I took the packet of letters from Sirlofty’s panniers and hurried back up with them. By then, a tempting luncheon had been set out for us in the den. I ate most of it in near silence, for my uncle could not resist his impulse to begin immediately on Epiny’s letters. It was like watching a plant revived by a rainfall after a drought to watch him first smile and then chuckle over her descriptions of her adventures. As he carefully folded the last page of the most recent missive, he looked up at me. “I think she is finding life as a frontier wife rather different from what she supposed it to be.”

“I cannot imagine a greater change in living conditions than leaving your family home here in Old Thares for a poor cottage in Bitter Springs.”

He replied with grim satisfaction in his voice, “And yet she does not complain. She does not threaten to run back home to me, nor does she whimper that she deserves better. She accepts the future that she made for herself. I am proud of her for that. Her life, indeed, is not what I would have chosen for her. I would never have believed that my flighty, childish daughter would have the strength to confront such things. And yet she has, and she flourishes.”

I myself thought that “flourish” was far too strong a word to apply to what Epiny was doing, but I held my tongue. Uncle Sefert loved his unruly daughter. If he took pride in her ability to deal with harsh conditions, I would not take that from him.

I was willing to leave Epiny’s letters with him, but he insisted I take them back. Privately, I resolved to rebuke her for making her father suffer so; what had he done to deserve such treatment? He’d given her far more freedom than most girls of her age enjoyed, and she’d used it to arrange a marriage to her own liking. Even after she had publicly disgraced herself by fleeing his house and going to Spink’s sickbed, my uncle had not disowned her, but had given her a modest wedding and a nice sendoff. What more did she expect of the man?

As I bade my uncle farewell, he gave me a letter to my father and some small gifts for my mother and sisters, and I managed to find room for them in my panniers. I made a brief stop at my father’s banker in Old Thares to change my check into banknotes, and then went immediately down to the docks. My ship was already loading, and I was glad I had arrived with some time to spare, for Sirlofty received the last decent box stall onboard the vessel. My own cabin, though very small, was comfortable and I was glad to settle into it.

My upriver passage on the jankship was not nearly as exciting as our flight downriver had been the previous fall. The current was against us, and though it was not yet in full spring flood, it was still formidable. The vessel used not only oarsmen, but also a method of propulsion called cordelling, in which a small boat rowed upstream with a line threaded through a bridle and made fast to the mast. Once the small boat had tied the free end of the line to a fixed object such as a large tree, the line was reeled in on a capstan on the jankship. While we were reeling in the first line, a second towline was already being set in place, and in this way, we moved upriver between six and fifteen miles a day. An upstream journey on one of the big passenger janks was more stately than swift, and more like spending time at an elegant resort than simple travel.