Chapter 5: The Princess

Ryndi del Angles was a skinny fourteen-year-old redhead. She was a tomboy, had been a tomboy, and probably would be until she was too old to climb trees anymore. She was a handful and a half, enjoying riding as much as climbing trees.

This particular day, she was preening in front of a mirror. Any day was a good day to be the king’s only daughter, and this was her fourteenth birthday, and she had a new frock, new riding breeches, and a wonderful new tunic and belt, the tunic being an amazing purple-green.

Old Mama had laid out her new things this morning, and she had eagerly jumped at the chance to wear them. The woman came back into Ryndi’s room and looked over the young woman.

“Very nice, Princess. Now, the tunic has to come off. Perhaps the frock would be better. Your father is going to give you a special treat this day. A hint: it involves going to the market.”

Ryndi wasn’t unhappy to be going to the market, although she was a young woman of modest wants and needs and didn’t need nearly as many market days as most women seemed to want. But she couldn’t wear purple in the market, nor could she wear pants and a tunic. Proper ladies of her father’s court didn’t appear in public in anything other than a dress, and purple was reserved for special occasions.

Old Mama wasn’t really all that old, but when you’re two and you have a young mother and an older nursemaid, the title had been an easy one to assign. Ryndi sighed again. It wasn’t an easy thing being a woman, no matter how easy it seemed at times. Childbirth was a risky thing; her father was on his fourth wife, all of whom had died in childbirth. Only his first wife had survived two births, and her second-oldest brother was simple. His first wife had died at the conclusion of her third pregnancy. A king whose wife gave him three sons didn’t have much to complain about — although it was true that the oldest son was as mean as a treed cat, the second simple.

Her third brother was a good man, who’d studied hard, and the people of the realm hoped he’d be the successor — not that people talked about succession yet. Her fourth brother was the smartest of them all, was a renowned fighter and military tactician and strategist. Her youngest brother had more in common with her second. Not that he was simple, but he was the opposite of the fourth brother. He was effeminate, spouted poetry, and held entirely too many parties for like-minded friends.

Ryndi tried not to think about them too much. Her own fate was unappetizing. As the king’s only daughter, she was going to be married off to someone for political reasons. She was aware that there were far too many older dukes that weren’t married. Most of them were very old, very fat, and completely unappealing. She would be old enough at sixteen to be put on display, at seventeen she’d be engaged, and married long before her eighteenth birthday. It was an altogether unappealing, appalling future. The thought of running away had been growing for a year now.

Old Momma grinned at her. “Daydreaming as usual! Young lady, you need to get your head out of the clouds on this day. Your father has decreed that today you will look through the indentured servants and purchase one of their contracts. You aren’t to do anything foolish; she will be suitable maid material, sixteen to twenty years of age. Presentable and in reasonable health.”

Her own maid! Old Momma had done it for years, but when a girl got her own maid, she was coming of age. Of course, that made it clear that marriage was fast approaching, but a maid! Someone she could share confidences with, ask some of the million questions she had about growing up with the hope of some sort of reasonable answer!

The palace was high on a plateau that overlooked the winter capital — although of late her father had taken to staying there year-round. There was a nice road that led down to the city, then a broad straight shot to the market square.

A lot of people lived here. The climate was moderate, summer or winter. There was a substantial river just north and east of town. A navigable river that ran three hundred miles inland here, through some of the best farmland anywhere. The Valley dukes and counts were some of the richest men in the kingdom.

Old Momma had been franker than usual about marriage prospects in the last year. “A toothless old man isn’t much of a prize — unless he’s a rich old toothless man. Then that works to your advantage; he’s too old to take you to bed often, and he’ll die soon. Odds are he’ll have a raft of sons already hanging around, and they will give you a bunch of money, and usually a small estate to get rid of you. Beats retiring to a nunnery.”

Such thoughts kept running through her head as they reached the market. By a lot of people, she meant about a half million lived in the close environs of the capital. The market square was always crowded, noisy, and filled with excitement.

The area where indentured servants were available to purchase was a closed-in space, not terribly large. The slave market was larger, but it wasn’t surprising to Ryndi that her father wanted her to get an indentured servant. Slaves had an annoying tendency to get upset at their condition and slice the throats of their owners in the middle of the night.