They brought unrest to the farmhouse. Greeshma took over the room that had belonged to Wilda's parents, while Gritt sat in the armchair by the fireplace and smoked cigar after cigar, filling the house with the sickly sweet smell until Miran could bear it no longer and opened all the windows and doors. She kept Del by her side, giving the little girl task after task until late afternoon.
"We will be having a guest for supper," Gritt said as the first stars appeared in the darkening sky. Wilda sighed. She imagined it was one of the men from the village, and the men who would befriend Gritt were not the kind she would've invited to her home. Half of the townsmen already took her enduring success and livelihood as a personal insult. A woman surviving without problems, running her own land, harvesting her own fields, with a daughter that ran among the fields like a creature out of the woods.
Miran headed for the open windows. It was evening and starting to cool. Her grandmother did not care where she spent the night as long as she trained regularly and returned, and Wilda's barn was sometimes an easier place to sleep than her suite of rooms in the manor.
"Del, help me with the windows," she asked. For once the little girl was not quick to obey. The little girl threw a look at the woman at the kitchen table, wondering if she would help. Greeshma continued to pick grapes off the fruit bowl on the table, oblivious to most things unconcerned with food. The only commands she followed were her husband's.
As she worked she heard footsteps on the upper floor, bedroom doors being opened and closed. Miran gritted her teeth and stayed silent. She liked boundaries, respect. She demanded it for herself, ever since the day she saw that she deserved them. They were disrespecting her friend by not respecting her boundaries, her property.
"Mira, help me!"
The last of the windows had rusted hinges, and although Del was strong for her age, she couldn't get it to budge. Miran started to pull the window closed when she saw him. The man was tall and gauntly. He wore a black coat with a white dress shirt, and a silk ascot tied neatly. His shoes were polished and his grey hair oiled back. It was obvious Avis was trying to impress.
She sighed in frustration. Miran could only pity her friend. Dinner with her relatives who thus far seemed to be the lowest most dregs of humanity, and her scorned suitor.
Avis walked in, clacking his dark cane on the wooden floors and clearing his throat. Miran wondered if he expected to be announced, as he sometimes was at the balls held at other manors and town events.
With a flippant glance, he threw her his overcoat and headed into the main room. Gritt greeted him with an embrace that was returned with an awkward pat on the back. They had opened a bottle of whiskey and passed it around , each taking a sip and growing increasingly free with their words.
"Can't believe I'm a farmer now," Gritt said. He shook his head. He was a city boy, raised in the narrow alleys of Cildaron's capital city, Zarji. Ashward was a sleepy little town. Its entire population could fit into one of the tenements of Sunira's outer city neighborhoods. Wilda stiffened at his words, yet continued to place plates onto the dinner table.
The magistrate took his seat at the head of the table in the formal dining room. Gritt took the seat next to him with a forced smile. Until the petition was filed and the records keeper of Ashward recognized him as the new owner of the farm, he had to play nice. He indulged the man. Avis was a horrible guest, both to the real owner of the farm and the newly arrived interloper.
"I've recently bought a set of china from the travelling merchants from Zarji. It's a lovely set. Cost me dearly, but what is life without beautiful things?"
Miran heard their conversations from the kitchen. She sat the kitchen table with Del, an infinitely better dinner companion than the adults in the other room. Theirs was simpler fare, and instead of wine in their glasses there was honeyed milk and water.
"Uncle Gritt says I should be packing my bags," Del said. "Am I going to be sent away for school?"
It was something Wilda spoke of often. She wanted to send Del to a nearby school for girls. It was near enough to visit occasionally, but far enough that Del would have to stay in the dormitory of the school. Wilda had only attended the primary school in Ashward, a ramshackle building that produced literates who could sign their own names, read grocery lists, and do basic arithmetic. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more. She wanted better for her daughter, and the school a few hours away in the neighboring town of Raveirin produced graduates who were hired in the capital city, became governesses in noble houses, or married men of reputable professions such as barristers, doctors, and sometimes even lower nobility.
Miran doubted Gritt had told Del to pack with such benevolent purposes. It was sooner than she thought he would try to shove them out of their home. Miran poured more water into Del's glass without answering, urging her to eat without speaking.
Del was still young, and hopelessly optimistic about human nature. Miran knew better. If all went according to Gritt and Avis's machinations, Wilda and Del would be out on the street. She imagined Avis would open his door to them, with conditions applying for his shelter.
Her grandmother took care of their lands, but she left the law to the magistrate, not interfering even when the law was on the wrong side. Miran could not remain so unmoved when faced with injustice.
For the night, she was a makeshift nanny. After dinner, she took Del up to the child's room. By the time Del slept and she came back down, the adults were in the main room, indulging in more spirits and tobacco. They had moved from cigars to a cruder implement, crushed leaves of tobacco wrapped in a sheet of thin paper and set alight at the ends.
The stench of tobacco settled into the upholstered furniture and the rugs, and would remain in the house long after the visitors were gone. If they left at all, Miran reminded herself. Wilda sat primly at the edge of a loveseat, while Avis leaned into the back of the other side of the loveseat languidly, his fingertips a hair's breadth away from the back of her neck.
"Have you considered my petition?" Gritt asked. "I don't want to have any problems with the merchants when they come to buy the harvest crops."
"Yes, if all goes well…"
Avis looked at the woman next to him. There were a few women in Ashward who would accept a proposal from him, and some of them were pretty young things. The post of a magistrate was a lifetime appointment, and any sane woman would accept a proposal from a man who would make a steady income until the day he died.
He understood that Wilda had a daughter to think about, but women with her beauty were not meant to spend their lives in mourning. Her husband was dead, her daughter was no longer a babe, and her farm would soon not be hers. She couldn't reject him again, not when there would be few other choices for her.
Miran leaned against the wall of the room. None of them noticed her walk in, and none of them paused to even look at her. They discussed the dismantling of her parents' hard work like it was the weather, and the theft of her labor and care like it was nothing at all.
"Have you ever planted anything before?" Miran asked.
She found joy and exhilaration in fighting, it was true. Sometime in the years of training she discovered the sweet taste of victory and indulged in it frequently. But as much as a fight was fun, there was something sacred in farming. Farmers planted a seed and poured their heart and soul and hope into the soil, and yielded food for people. The temples worshipped the gods of the sky and the elements, but she liked the goddess of the Earth, Sthira, to whom the farmers offered the first bale of wheat or first bushel of fruits.
Miran looked down at Gritt's hands. They were fine hands, with well-trimmed nails and fingers that seemed more adept at holding a pen than a sword or spade. He was a city-dweller, through and through. While there was nothing wrong with people from the city, they often looked down on the occupants of Ashward. They considered the farmers and shepherds provincial and simple. She knew there was nothing special about Ashward. The Carmanor lands did not have the rolling hills of Lower Moraca, or the beautiful blue oceans of the Sunchester coast. They only had endless farmlands, wheat that extended in all directions like a golden ocean, and people that were hard-working and just like any others.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Gritt asked. He was disliking the servant more and more by the minute.
"How are you a farmer then, if you do not know the first thing of farming?" she asked.
Gritt narrowed his eyes at the young woman. She was dressed poorly, but her speech was refined. Her education was not from the little school in Ashward, and he thought before speaking.
"Why would I need to know when I have farmhands to do the work for me?" he asked. Now that he thought of it, he had not seen any other workers in the fields. Only the widow and the young woman. Other farms, he knew, hired young men for the harvest at least. But Wilda was either a miser of colossal proportions, or the farm was worth much less than he had thought.
"My employment is with Wilda. Not some greenhorn who imagines himself a great plantation owner. I do not think it will be easy for you to find workers here."
Wilda was an oddity in the town of Ashward, but she was still one of them. Gritt, with his pompous air and his delusions about farming, would not be welcome. Most of the young men were already hired to work at neighboring farms for the harvest, and the few who remained… she could ensure they received sudden job offers from the Carmanor manor.
"Nonsense!" Avis yelled. "There are always desperate souls in search of work. Don't heed the words of the servant girl, my dear man. I shall set you up with some good men tomorrow morning."
"They won't work for an outsider," Miran answered. "Especially not one that's city born and raised. And I wonder, what will you pay them if they choose to work for you?"
Gritt faltered. He had some savings from the city, a few gold coins and coppers, but it was money he might need. Greeshma and her husband Robias had a little, but they were not the sort to part with coin easily.
"I can give them a share of the crop," he answered after a moment.
Miran smirked. "There's a reason why farmhands aren't farmers. You don't know how much your crop will sell for. It could be that the valleys of Lised have produced excess wheat this year, and rendered our crops less valuable and needed. The merchants will haggle more fiercely, and secure a lower price for themselves. Farmers take the risk of a lower price every year, but farmhands won't be willing to. They work for coin, sir, and only that."
"You don't have much coin, do you?" she asked. Gritt looked away.
"I shall lend the gentleman some money," Avis proclaimed. "It is the least I can do for an honorable man and a new friend."
"Do you do that for every new farmer in our fair town?" she asked. "Because I know the rules for magistrates forbid partiality towards particular residents. It would be a shame if word reached the minister that the magistrate of Ashward was playing favorites."
Avis glanced at the young woman. The rule she spoke of was little known and not often implemented, but she spoke with determination. He saw around town sometimes, hanging around the pub and working on the fields. Most often, she was with Wilda's little brat. He did not know what her name was or whose daughter she was. It was strange for a woman to exude such confidence in Ashward.
Even Wilda, who had a questionable claim to the farm, sat meekly and stared at her folded hands.
"Silence, peasant!" he yelled, seeing it was the wrong course of action when the amused smile left her lips.
Miran did not mind being called a peasant. But she did not enjoy being yelled at. No one yelled at her. Not her grandmother, not the swordmaster, and not even Rei, who could stop the rain with a single word and capture a lightning bolt with one hand. When such people gave her the respect she deserved, this pathetic little man with hair that would catch fire from a single spark certainly had no right.
"How dare you yell at me, you vile little toad," she growled. Her hand reached for the small dagger sewn into the lining of her boot, but there was no joy or glory in fighting an unarmed, incompetent man.
"You insulted a guest in my home," Gritt said. He turned to Wilda. "Is this how your servants treat guests, cousin? With disrespect and mockery? I may not know how to grow a single stalk of wheat, but I know how to discipline errant workers."
His open palm swung for her face, and Miran reacted the only way she knew how.