Nerilka's Story by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online

of all I had
not
done for my mother, of my uncharitable absence from the last moments my sisters had had at Fort Hold. I seethed, too, with fury at the usurper and vowed that I would not lift a hand to assist her in her new role. How convenient that she couldn’t even remember my name properly. If I judged the temper of the Hall correctly, she would have no help from anyone, even in such a small matter as the correct nomenclature of Lord Tolocamp’s children.
    I drank more wine that evening than is my custom—or perhaps it was because I also ate so little. It was enough to finish the meal and slip from the Hall to the kitchens, to be sure that this new Lady Holder had not countermanded my order about the broken meats. Then, by the back stairs, I sought my own room and the solace of sleep.

 
    Chapter V
     
    3.15.43
     
     
     
    T HE DRUMS WOKE me at dawn, for in my giddiness I had forgotten to plug my ears. Then the message woke me up completely—Twelve Wings had flown Thread at Igen and all was well.
    How could twelve Wings have flown out of Igen Weyr when half the dragonriders were ill of the plague and the Weyr had already suffered deaths? They could not have mounted more than nine Wings if their casualties had been accurately reported, and there would be no advantage to prevaricate at this terrible moment.
    I rose and dressed, then descended to the kitchens to surprise the drudges brewing the first of the many urns of klah. Its aromatic smell was a restorative all by itself, and the first fragrant cup was the best one of any day, heartening me all the more in my grief and dismay. I was stirring the porridge when Felim appeared, his face first brightening, then falling into a suitably lugubrious expression as he advanced on me.
    “I was obliged to send basketsful of untouched food to the camps, Lady Nerilka. Wasn’t the dinner well enough?”
    “Few of us had the heart to eat, Felim. It is no insult to you.”
    “
She
complained that I did not offer sufficient choice of sweets,” he told me, offended. “Has she any idea of the handicaps under which I labor? I cannot chop and change midday. There isn’t a single apprentice or journeyman able to provide a choice of sweets on an hour’s notice in such quantities as are needed in the Hall these days.”
    I murmured phrases to soothe his damaged self-esteem, more out of habit than a desire to redeem Anella in his eyes. A disgruntled cook could cause real problems in a Hold the size of Fort. Let Anella learn by her mistakes, and discover just how much hard work it was to be Lady Holder.
    It was then that I realized the truth of her announcement: She was Lady Holder, and due all the courtesies and honors that had been my mother’s. Well, there were certain private possessions of my mother’s that would not fall into her hands. I said a few pacifying words to Felim, to ensure a decently cooked meal this evening, and rushed to my mother’s office on the sublevel.
    There I quickly removed all her private journals, her notes about this personality and that worker—we girls had long known her to jog her memory by these entries, and had done our best not to figure in them very often. They would be invaluable reading to Anella and hideously embarrassing to us, not only to have our childhood peccadilloes revealed, but also the problems of the second-story occupants. Mother had some gems and jewelry that were hers in her own right, not Hold adornments, which should by rights be divided among the surviving daughters. I doubted Anella’s probity in distributing them, so I chose to undertake that task as well.
    If Anella thought these things had been removed, she might search for them, so I hurried along the back passages to the stores and hid the two sacks of journals and the small parcel of jewelry on the top of a dusty shelf. Anella was hands shorter than I.
    I was on my way back when Sim intercepted me.
    “Lady Nerilka,
she
is asking for a Lady Nalka.”
    “Is she?