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ALL LANDHOLDERS WITH UNMARRIED DAUGHTERS, REGARDLESS OF FUTURE ARRANGEMENT: SEEK COUNCIL WITH YOUR LORDS.
ALL LORDS WITH UNMARRIED DAUGHTERS, REGARDLESS OF FUTURE ARRANGEMENT: SEEK COUNCIL WITH YOUR DUKE.
They ignored the notice on the door. Their father had been in the ground just short of a year, may his scent draw vermin to gnaw at his bones. Even if he hadn't the first still wouldn't have applied: they hadn't been a daughter since they'd reached the age of record, when he'd listed her in the province's deeds as a son.
Before that she'd been allowed six years or so of ignorance, their mother still the one to braid their long dark hair with her own two hands, fingercombing the thick silk strands and singing songs in a language the elder wasn't supposed to speak and the child wasn't allowed to know. At six their father sat them down for a conversation, its importance marked if not by his involvement at all then by the somber tones that weighed down the middle of an otherwise lofty speech, as if he was asking if they wanted to be the next king.
“Your mother isn't allowed to leave the house if I say so. She must always wear as many skirts as others say is proper. She will never own anything greater than a pet or a garden. She cannot read or write.”
“She can read and write,” they’d frowned in confusion. “I’ve seen her.”
“Not in a language that matters,” he'd corrected with utmost gravity. “She isn't allowed any money to herself, and if I told her tomorrow that I wanted a dozen heirs she would have to oblige me. Do you know what that means?” He waited for her to shake her head; she'd still been young enough not to know better than to admit to not knowing an answer. “It means that she would have to stay fat and tired with babies until I had a dozen boys.”
“Why,” she'd whispered, aghast.
“Because it's the way things are. Do you want that for yourself?”
They'd shaken their head with a fervor that now they knew, as an adult who could understand such things, was a terrible betrayal of the woman who'd combed her fingers through their hair every morning and evening for so many years. The memory of that betrayal made them feel vile; they hoped the words she sang were curses on their head. They didn't know whether that was something the Laeal were truly guilty of, stories aside, but they wished it on her behalf.
“Good. I don't want that for us either. You're going to be a son from now on, then. To be a daughter is to have a life like your mother's: to be a prisoner of your house until you are dead. To be a son is to have freedom.”
They'd pressed their lips together in a thin line that made their father grunt in impatience. “Will she be sad if I'm not like her? I don't want her to be lonely.”
“No,” he'd reassured with a charm that they knew now had no truth behind it. “It gives your mother freedom, too. No more fat and tired with babies or any such business to make them.” He'd picked them up then, proudly perching them on one folded arm to admire. It had been such a foreign motion that they'd half expected to be thrown, clutching his sleeve so hard their knuckles went white. “You'll be all we need for the future.”
Their decision, if that was what such coercion could be called, gave him two years in which to teach them how to be, in the most superficial sense to any passing eye, a son. Children went on the record at eight to avoid wasting ink. In that time their mother saw them less and less, until their rearing was fully passed along to tutors of every discipline, as it should have been with any man in a high-hills family. Soon afterward she disappeared altogether - not by illness or decree as her father insisted would be the end of the Laeal as a people, ignoring that his son was made of the same blood by half, but with a Laeal workman - and fat and tired with a baby that would look more like her than they did. Her father deserved no better and she deserved no less. They hoped it was a better child than they'd been themself.
They pulled the notice down on their way inside, inching it into their palm from all directions to crumple it into a ball with one hand as they used the other to undo the buttons of their too-crisp coat. They kicked the door shut behind them with a heel and tossed the paper aside. “Ajes!” They called out with the loudest they had in them. “Please arrange for supper, I plan to be in for the night!”
The projector-né-governor, now principal of the estate to keep him by their side as what remained to call family, spent most of the daylight hours in the library or the atrium, both farther back. Come dusk, the usual hour for their meandering walks, he made his way to the smoking-turned-map room. Wherever he'd taken up residence would require some shouting to reach him. They'd tried to convince him to use the study for his more absorbing pursuits, not for their own convenience but for the sake of his health given the hoarseness the smoking room gave him, but he was a far more stubborn man than a sturdy one, with not so many years in him that he lacked any energy with which to argue.
Soon enough came the sound of footsteps hurrying across wood planks and marble tile. “There's no need to rush,” they loudly insisted, but the pace only slowed for a moment before returning to full vigor down the stairs to the kitchens. They hoped for all involved's sanity that he wasn't going to help the cook.
Calling for dinner was the last important business of the evening that necessitated their participation if it hadn't already been started without them. They let themself wander in the relative quiet until the weight of responsibility began to nag at their shoulders. Certain tasks were never meant to fall to the head of household, but posthumous access to their father's ledgers had required they make certain changes, like letting go of staff. Certain positions couldn't be done without, not without compromising function, but others seemed less a matter of necessity than of their father's own ineptitude-by-status; surely they could manage to sweep and dust with their own two hands, to spark and douse wicks, to beat rugs. They paced through the front rooms lighting lamps, then lingered before the selection of reading materials left for them across the study mantle, leafing through as they removed them one by one to a pile in one arm.
Though they were considered Ajes' superior by social moors, it hardly compared to the rest of the ways in which Ajes dwarfed them. Age by a decade, experience by two thirds of a globe, learning by enough to have held the position of tutor to begin with - that felt like a lifetime ago, and yet, had it only been half? They thought he'd been released as a matter of punishment more than necessity when they'd aged enough to legally justify the end of their education. Then they'd seen the ledgers. If their father had been a smarter man perhaps he would have kept Ajes on for accounting - but then, with a complexion more like theirs than their father's, hiring the man for something so esteemed might have killed her father sooner.
Pity. Then they'd still have enough money for the better firewood.
No matter how many times they'd told him he was here as a renter, an equal, Ajes couldn't help but fall into old habits. Now there was a stack of new reading assignments for them every evening as if they were still being schooled in character; a page of notes on the work of the day as if he were a governor reporting to his employer; and a list of questions and requests on the goings-on within and beyond the walls as though he and the staff were not allowed to leave on their own merits. They wanted to suppose that, too, might be a matter of old ways of being. But that would be feigning ignorance; who knew how many postings had graced their door that they hadn't seen for themselves before the staff had burned them?
They retrieved the latest from where they'd tossed its crumpled form aside, and it, too, found its way into the fire.