“If I tell you the story, I think it will explain a lot. My older sister trained me, even after she was married. It didn’t take me long to realize that she was far more talented than her rankings with our House had ever indicated. Her rankings at her married House were climbing steadily. Once I realized that, it wasn’t much of a leap to figure out that it was because my father and brothers had always kept her from getting proper gear. Any time she tried to get her own gear, my brothers campaigned against it with my father. They demanded that he make her use their hand-me-downs so that they could spend more money on their equipment.”
“Since my sister wasn’t ranking so well, she ended up marrying this utter asshat. He recognized her value, so his family didn’t demand much in the way of a dowry, which pleased my older brothers to no end, as they thought they’d get whatever was left in the dowry fund after my youngest sister was married off. What they had planned for the rest of us… Once my sister and her husband were married, he strutted around talking about all the fine children she’d produce for his house, how good her bloodlines were, what an excellent pedigree she had, and how she’d be passing all that on to all his children. Every time she got pregnant, he was all self-congratulatory. You’d have thought he was the one giving birth.”
“Gods,” Benger grimaces, “It sounds like he was talking about a broodmare.”
“It did,” Emlyn nods, “He actually called her his little brooder to her face, and I hated him for it, for disrespecting her so. I hated my brothers for forcing her into settling for that when she could have been so much more.”
“What do you mean?” Benger says.
“If not for my brothers keeping her from being properly equipped, it would have been me as her First Awst,” Emlyn shrugs, “and my younger sister as Second Awst. Instead, she gave up and married that dung heap who just wanted her so he could make her squeeze out as many children as possible.”
Taking a deep breath, Emlyn stops short, “Sorry, I’m ranting about them, aren’t I?”
“Just a bit,” Benger laughs, “but I can see why. To have someone talk about you like that… treat you like that… to your face. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had stabbed them in their sleep.”
“The youngest one was my baby sister,” Emlyn chuckles and then grows serious again, “She was only four and still quite impressionable. I didn’t want her to grow up thinking that she should be like our older sister or listening to that rotten tripe my older brothers were spouting.”
“After what happened with your sister, I suppose I can understand that. I know that I wouldn’t want anyone trying to make less of my baby brothers just because they happened to be born male or convincing them that they were fit for nothing but breeding stock. There’s one thing I don’t understand. What’s a House Branch?” Benger asks.
“When you want to leave the dross from an established house behind,” Emlyn explains, “You take the members of your house who are ranking well and make a branch house. It usually happens when some children are convinced that they’re carrying other, less-contributing family members, either through rankings or financial means, or both.”
“If they lack the authority to force the slackers out of the House proper, they form a branch. Once the split happens, the new branch must stand on its own merits, but it inherits its status from the parent house at the time of the split. If the parent house's ranking goes up or down, the branch’s status doesn’t change. The parent house, however, only receives a tiny fraction of the rankings from the new branch, so my brothers would have only gained a few points of our rankings. It becomes sink or swim for both the parent and the branch.”
“If you want to increase your rankings on your side of the branch split, you have to do the kinds of things that my younger siblings and I were already doing, and all the things that my older brothers thought they were too good to do. My older brothers were riding our rankings and strutting around like peacocks, contributing only the bare minimum, while those of us who were younger drove ourselves to excel. We were out to form an independent power block so that we’d have better choices than being brooders for the next generation.”
“I can see where becoming a general would make you powerful,” Benger allows, “but I don’t understand how that builds an independent power block.”
“That’s why I was training my next sister,” Emlyn grins, “Once Bedo retired, I’d have been Geward Awst, the King’s Supreme General, in fairly short order, and my next sister would have been my First Awst, eventually. She had the mind for it, and I’d already broken the trail. One of my little brothers had quite a head for business dealings, and even though he wasn’t old enough to invest in his ideas himself, I had quietly been investing for all of us.”
“As a result, we, the younger ones, were quite wealthy, and that wealth was completely independent of our house. I didn’t need any of the dowry money that was set aside for us, but the dowry fund was part of my mother’s dowry, so we were entitled to it. The conditions stated that the dowry fund was to go to her daughters, and all of us who were unmarried were to be on my side of the split. So, I was going to take it when we left, to keep my brothers from getting their hands on it. What I hadn’t told anyone was that I’d peeked at the House finances. Coughing up that much cash in a lump sum would have beggared the House.”
“Would you have done that to your own family?” Benger asks, shocked.
“In a heartbeat,” Emyln grins wickedly, “You see, I planned to loan it back to them with the interest rate on the loan being dependent on my brothers’ rankings.”
“So, you were going to rub their noses in it?” Benger says, “You should be careful doing that kind of thing. That’s how family feuds start.”
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“Not everyone,” Emlyn waves a hand dismissively, “Just my father and three older brothers. It took my mother telling my father not to come home if he didn’t get us proper gear for the annual trials for my father to stop forcing us to use my older brother’s hand-me-downs. It wouldn’t have been so terrible if they had better taste in gear, but their idea of quality was strictly based on how good they thought it looked on them. Branching the House was my grandfather’s idea, before he passed away. My father’s father advised me to take the younger ones and leave them to ‘wallow in their own swill’ as he put it. What happened with my older sister wasn’t lost on him, either. If he’d still been alive, he’d have come with us, leaving his own son. My mother would have joined us eventually, but it might have taken her some time.”
“I take it that your older brothers fell into the…” Benger grins, “oh…what did you call them… foppish peacocks category?”
“They did,” Emlyn grins wryly, “I think the term was coined just for the three of them.”
“How are you handling… well, everything else?” Benger asks.
“It’s been quite a change,” Emlyn says slowly, “After being so independent, finding myself dependent on the Goddess and the Temple has been… humbling. Everyone’s been so kind, and no one’s made me feel any less for being penniless. Milvara’s been amazing to work with on my clothing. At the very least, she’s been kind enough to tell me that our arrangement has worked out well for her. When I visited her shop, she seemed quite busy, so it might even be true.”
“The Goddess herself told us the Temple should provide whatever you might need,” Benger grins, “With a directive like that, Master Ember can’t quibble too much, and I think that Gethin would happily hand the whole thing over to you. I’m absolutely certain that they’re back there right now trying to figure out how to help you hatch your big plan.”
“Heard about that already?” Emlyn grins, “It is ambitious, I grant you. That said, I don’t see any other way for us to get proper armor and weapons. I see why you wear brigandine instead of plate. Given the inferior steel, you don’t get enough protection to justify the extra weight.”
“What do you consider good steel?” Benger asks cautiously.
“We had different blends of steel,” Emlyn says slowly, “depending on what it was going to be used for. The definition of good should be fit for the purpose for which it's intended. There’s steel that’s good for springs, but not for armor or dye pots. We had different kinds of bronze, too—bronze for bells, another kind for bearings, and another kind for statues. I’ve been working with Master Lokrag, and we’re not having any more luck recreating the bronze for bearings than we have had trying to make steel for blades. That’s when I decided to see if anyone had better steel or bronze anywhere in Harito.”
“And?” Benger gestures, “What did you find?”
“I already told you,” Emlyn chuckles, “It’s all horrible. The bronze is fragile and corrodes too easily. One good whack and it either shatters or warps when it should be nearly as hard as steel. The steel dents much too easily. It’s hard to get it to take an edge, and if you do manage to get an edge on it, it won’t hold that edge. If it does take an edge, it’s too brittle to be useful. Gods help you if you drop it, it shatters like glass. I’m fairly certain that we visited every foundry, smithy, and dealer of metals in Harito. Literally everything that wasn’t gold or silver was substandard. I suspect if the assayers weren’t keeping an eye on those, they’d have been substandard too. When I asked to see the ores, I wasn’t pleased with any of them. The colors were all… odd. The texture of them was… wrong. The smell of them was off, too. I don’t know everything, but I know enough to know that if you don’t start with the right ores, you won’t get the right metals.”
Oja stands in the doorway with a couple of steaming mugs and watches the two of them chatting, and smiles. Daki comes up behind her and starts to move her out of the way, but Oja elbows him. Daki looks at his wife curiously, and she nods towards the pair on the porch, “Leave them be.”
Frowning a bit, she nudges Daki back inside and quietly closes the door. “Your son is talking to a girl,” Oja grins, “She’s the first one I’ve seen him take an interest in, so let them talk.”
“Do you think that’s why he brought her home?” Daki says, peeking out the window, “The two of them seem comfortable enough with each other.”
“According to his letter, she’s been through a lot. Lost her whole family and nearly died herself,” Oja says, “Apparently, they became friends while she was recovering in the Temple at Harito.”
“What happened?” Daki says, “Do you know?”
“Some kind of an attack,” Oja shrugs, “He said that the Goddess herself brought Nia to the Temple.”
“So, she’s got the favor of the Goddess,” Daki says slowly, “Is she wealthy?”
“I don’t think so,” Oja replies, “He said she didn’t have anywhere to go for Mid-Winter Break. If she had any money at all, someone would have offered to take her in for the Break just to see if one of their sons was interested.”
“They brought you a nice, huge rug,” Daki shrugs, “I know Benger didn’t buy it. Getting you a rug to keep your feet off the cold floor isn’t something Benger would ever think of on his own, so it has to be from her. It looks expensive. You don’t think it’s stolen, do you?”
“No,” Oja shakes her head, “She’s taken the same oaths that he has. You can’t do that and be a thief.”
“Do you think there’s anything between them?” Daki asks, “I don’t want to see Benger disappointed. The way she holds herself and speaks, I don’t know that she’d even consider him.”
“I don’t think that there is. At least, not yet,” Oja says slowly, “He was pretty clear that the two of them are just friends. He says she’s not from anywhere around here. He said he wanted to bring her here to let her see some of the country and get a sense of the people in Tassatung, since they would be working together. She’s apparently from somewhere quite far away and knows nothing of Tassatung.”
“If she’s in his cohort,” Daki replies, “then I doubt that there’s anything like that between them. If there were, they wouldn’t be allowed to be in the same cohort.”
“So much for that idea,” Oja shrugs, “Warrick will likely be married to the miller’s daughter before Benger ever sets his cap for a girl.”
“Why don’t you ask her if he’s got someone at the Temple?” Daki suggests, “It’s possible he’s got a girl there. All those acolytes and novitiates running around. Maybe one of them has caught his eye. She’d be more likely to give you the right of it, I think.”
“I might just do that,” Oja says, “Now let me go get them in the house before this tea gets cold.”
“I’ll get Warrick and Rovid to bring their things in, and Arrock can take the horses out to the barn,” Daki says..
Grinning at her husband, Oja nudges him aside and steps onto the porch, “Here, I made you both some tea. It’s bound to have been a long, cold ride if you got here early.”
Catching a look between Emlyn and Benger, her maternal instincts perk up.
“What happened?” Oja asks cautiously. Taking the mug, Benger nods toward Emlyn, “I don’t really want to talk about it here. Vonham’s already been pestering Nia for details, which she wisely avoided. I don’t think anyone wants him to start trying to re-enact that.”
“In that case,” Oja nods sagely, “Why don’t you two come help me in the kitchen? It’s nice and warm with the cookstove going, and the boys will be avoiding it at all costs just so that I don’t put them to work peeling or chopping.”
Nodding, Benger, and Emlyn follow Oja into the kitchen.
This is totally the time of year for family drama. Without naming names what's your best story? Let me know in the comments.