Chapter 4 — Syla
The household budget for the month of Ashmonth was, in Syla’s careful assessment, seventeen copper over what it needed to be.
She had the ledger open on the kitchen table at the fifth hour of morning, before anyone else was awake, before even the earliest of Ashfeld’s early risers had started their chimneys. The lamp was low — she’d noted that too, added it to the running list — and the kitchen was cold in the specific way of early morning kitchens that hadn’t been asked to do anything yet.
She went through the numbers again.
The overage was Vera. Specifically Vera’s training equipment, which needed replacing more frequently than anyone else’s because Vera trained with a commitment that bordered on violence toward the equipment itself. The new grip wrappings alone had cost four copper this month. Syla had already sourced a supplier in Drenfall who sold equivalent quality for two and a half and had written a note to discuss this with Cidd when the moment was right.
She closed the ledger.
Made tea.
This was the part of the morning she liked best — the absolute quiet of the kitchen before the house woke up, the small purposeful ritual of heating water and measuring leaves and setting cups out for everyone in the order they usually came downstairs. Vera’s cup on the left because Vera always arrived sideways and reached left first. Ren’s in the center because Ren took up the center naturally in all things. Mira’s at the far end near her usual reading spot. Cidd’s —
She held his cup for a moment.
Then set it down precisely where it belonged.
She heard him before she saw him.
The back door. The particular sound of his footsteps returning from the clearing — different from his going-out footsteps, slightly slower, the weight distributed differently after an hour of forms. She had learned the sound of everyone in the house by their footsteps without meaning to. It had just happened, the way most things she knew had happened — through quiet observation and the tendency to pay attention to things that mattered to her.
The door opened.
Cidd came in.
He was slightly damp from the morning air, hair pushed back, the calm unhurried quality he always had after training like all the edges had been filed smooth. He saw the tea. He looked at Syla.
She looked at the ledger.
"You’re up early," he said.
"The numbers from last month needed reviewing." She kept her eyes on the page. "I found a supplier in Drenfall for training grip wrappings. Two and a half copper versus four. Same quality. I’d like to switch."
He sat down across from her. Picked up his cup.
She watched him from the corner of her eye. He was reading the note she’d left next to his cup — the summary she’d prepared of the month’s accounts, one page, clean handwriting, organized by category.
"You did this last night," he said.
"This morning."
"Syla. It’s the fifth hour."
"I know what hour it is." She turned a page in the ledger that didn’t need turning. "The lamp oil is also running low. I’ve added it to the market list."
He was quiet for a moment.
She could feel him looking at her. This was something she had complicated feelings about — being looked at by him, specifically. Most people looking at her made her want to become a smaller target. Him looking at her made her want to say things she hadn’t worked out how to say yet and the gap between wanting and being able to was where most of her problems lived.
"Thank you," he said.
"It’s just numbers," she said to the ledger.
The house woke up in stages.
Vera first, arriving in the kitchen at speed and immediately demanding to know what was for breakfast with the energy of someone who had been awake for some time upstairs doing things that would probably need to be explained later.
Ren second, coming downstairs with her hair still loose and an expression of aggressive morning cheerfulness that Syla privately found impressive because she herself required at least an hour before she was ready to be cheerful at anyone.
Mira last, from the study rather than upstairs, which meant she’d fallen asleep at the desk again, which Syla had predicted and had left a blanket outside the study door for at the second hour and which Mira had apparently used because she arrived in the kitchen with blanket creases on her cheek and her hair doing something architectural.
Syla made breakfast.
This was also just how it was — she didn’t think of it as a task, it was simply the morning taking its natural shape, eggs from the Brenvar farm because she’d arranged a standing trade three months ago of mending work for fresh eggs, bread from the dough she’d started last night, the preserved herbs from the garden she’d planted in the spring because buying herbs at market was inefficient when you had space and soil.
She put food in front of everyone.
Ren said "you’re incredible" without looking up from her cup.
Vera said "can we have the sweet bread tomorrow" which was not a thank you but was, from Vera, essentially the same thing.
Mira said nothing but ate with the focused attention of someone who had not eaten since early yesterday and was now rectifying that, which Syla had also predicted.
Cidd said "thank you Syla" in the tone he used when he meant it specifically, not as a pleasantry.
She went back to the stove.
Her face did something she was grateful nobody could see from that angle.
The argument started after breakfast.
It started, as many things did, with Ren.
Specifically with Ren announcing to the table while Syla was washing dishes and everyone else was in various stages of not helping that she had decided today was the day she was going to get Father to let her wash his back.
The table received this announcement in varying ways.
Vera looked up from her training manual. "What."
"His back," Ren said pleasantly. "I’ve been thinking about it. It’s a completely reasonable thing to want to do. I’ll wash his hair too. I have a very good technique."
"You are not," Vera said, "washing Father’s anything."
"I don’t see why not. I wash everyone else’s hair when they ask."
"Nobody is asking you to wash Father’s hair."
"I’m asking myself. On his behalf. I think he’d appreciate it if he just let himself."
Syla kept washing dishes.
She was listening to every word.
"Father," Vera said, turning to Cidd, who had the expression of a man who had been hoping this conversation would resolve itself before involving him, "tell Ren she cannot wash your hair."
"Ren," Cidd said carefully, "you cannot wash my hair."
"I could though," Ren said, completely untroubled. "I’m very good at it. Syla, tell him I’m good at it."
"You’re good at it," Syla said to the dishes.
"See —"
"That doesn’t mean you should wash Father’s hair," Syla added.
"Why not."
"Because." Syla put a clean bowl on the drying rack. "It’s not appropriate."
"It would be appropriate if he was my husband," Ren said. "Which he will be. So technically it’s just early."
"He’s not going to be your husband," Vera said.
"He’s going to be mine," Ren said.
"Mine," Vera said.
"Mine," Ren said.
"This is not —" Vera stood up. "This is not a competition you can win by just saying it more times than me. I told him first. I told him on the step two weeks ago."
"I told him at breakfast the morning before that," Ren said. "In front of everyone. Very clearly. Father, you remember."
Cidd had the look of a man reviewing his options and finding none of them satisfactory.
"I remember," he said carefully.
"See," Ren said.
"That’s not —" Vera pointed. "Saying I love you at breakfast is not the same as a formal declaration of intent. I had a formal declaration of intent. On the step. At night. Under the stars."
"That’s very romantic," Ren agreed. "I’m sure it was lovely. I still told him first."
"You didn’t propose."
"I implied it strongly."
"That’s not —"
"Mira," Ren said, turning, "you’re the logical one. Settle this."
Mira, who had been reading throughout this entire exchange with the focused serenity of someone in a different building, turned a page. "I’m not settling anything. I’ve already decided what I’m doing and it doesn’t require arbitration."
"Which is what," Vera demanded.
"When I’m older and my position is established I’ll make my case directly to Father in terms he can’t reasonably argue with." She turned another page. "Until then I see no benefit in debating the matter with people who haven’t thought it through."
"I’ve thought it through," Vera said.
"You have a declaration of intent. I have a ten year plan." Mira looked up briefly. "These are different things."
Vera opened her mouth.
Ren said: "What if I just kissed him right now, would that settle it?"
The table went briefly silent.
Cidd said: "Ren."
"On the cheek," Ren said. "That’s very normal. Daughters kiss their fathers on the cheek all the time."
"You can kiss me on the cheek," Cidd said.
Ren stood up.
"Not as a competition," Cidd said.
Ren sat back down. Thought about this. "What if I just do it because I want to."
"That’s different."
She stood up again, came around the table, kissed him on the cheek with complete sincerity, and returned to her seat. "There," she said, to no one in particular. "That’s done."
"That proves nothing," Vera said.
"It proves I did it first today."
"That’s not a metric that —"
"SYLA."
Everyone looked at Syla.
Syla had put down the dish she was washing. She had turned around. She had the expression she got — the one her sisters had learned to recognize over ten years of living with her — where the shyness went somewhere else entirely and what was left was something that knew exactly what it was going to say.
The kitchen got quiet.
"Vera declared first," Syla said. Her voice was completely calm. "Ren expressed first. Mira has a plan. You’ve all been very loud about all of it." She looked at the table. "But none of you noticed that Father’s tea was cold this morning before he sat down and I’d already made a second cup. None of you noticed that he came home from fixing Aldren’s fence last week with a cut on his left hand and I’d put the salve on the table before he got through the door. None of you noticed that I changed his bedding last month to the heavier wool because the nights were getting colder and he doesn’t notice things like that about himself."
Complete silence.
"I’m not loud about it," Syla continued, in the same level tone. "I’m not going to stand here and argue about who said what first or who kissed whose cheek." She picked up the dish again. "But if anyone at this table wants to discuss who actually pays attention — who has been paying attention, every single day, for ten years —" she looked at each of them in turn, briefly, with the calm certainty of someone who has already won an argument before it started — "I’m happy to continue that conversation."
She went back to the dishes.
The kitchen was very quiet.
Vera sat down slowly.
Ren had an expression that suggested she was reviewing the evidence and finding the verdict uncomfortable.
Mira had stopped pretending to read and was looking at Syla with something that was either respect or the look of someone updating a calculation.
Cidd was looking at the back of Syla’s head.
Syla washed dishes and did not turn around and was extremely glad nobody could see her face.
The afternoon was guarding rotation.
Ashfeld didn’t have a formal guard — too small, too quiet, too far from anything that caused trouble deliberately. What it had was Cidd, who walked the perimeter in the late afternoon as a matter of habit and had been doing so since the third month after they arrived when a pair of D tier Gnolls had tested the northern fence line and found it considerably less undefended than it looked.
Word had gotten around after that.
Nothing tested the fence line anymore.
Syla sometimes walked with him.
Not always — she didn’t want to be predictable about it, didn’t want it to become something he felt obligated to accommodate. Just sometimes, when the afternoon was good and the household was in order and she had done everything that needed doing and could allow herself an hour that was just —
This.
Walking beside him on the perimeter path while the pine hills caught the late light and Ashfeld went about its afternoon business behind them.
He didn’t fill silences unnecessarily. This was something she valued about him — had always valued, from the earliest age she could remember valuing things. He let quiet be quiet. He didn’t mistake silence for emptiness and try to fill it. He just walked and she walked beside him and the afternoon did what it did.
"The northern fence needs a new post," she said, at the third corner. "Third from the left. I noticed it last week."
"I saw it," he said. "I’ll do it before the end of the month."
"I can source the timber from —"
"Syla."
She stopped.
He was looking at her with the expression he used when he was about to say something he’d been thinking about for longer than the current conversation.
"You don’t have to manage everything," he said.
She looked at the fence post.
"I know," she said.
"Do you."
She was quiet for a moment.
The thing she wanted to say was sitting right there — had been sitting there for years, honestly, getting more defined the older she got, not less — but the gap between wanting to say it and being able to find words that were adequate for it was still there, same as always.
"I like doing it," she said, which was true and also not the whole truth and she suspected he knew the difference.
He looked at her for another moment.
Then he nodded and they kept walking and the afternoon did what it did and the thing she hadn’t said went back to wherever it waited and she told herself that was fine.
It was fine.
She was ten years old and she had time.
That night after dinner she sat at the kitchen table with the ledger and the lamp and the quiet house settling around her and she went through the numbers again. Found three more small adjustments. Made notes in her careful handwriting. Planned the market list for next week. Checked the herb stores. Added timber to the running list.
She could hear Vera upstairs running sword forms in her room. The rhythm of it was familiar — the same sequence, over and over, until it was right.
She could hear Ren humming in the room next to the kitchen, already half asleep by the sound of it.
She could hear Mira turning pages in the study.
And from outside, from the direction of the step, the particular quality of silence that meant Cidd was sitting there.
She looked at the ledger.
She looked at the back door.
She made a second cup of tea. Carried it outside without letting herself think about it too hard. Set it on the step beside him. Went back inside before he could say anything.
Through the window she saw him pick it up.
She sat back down at her ledger.
Her face did the thing again.
She let it this time, just for a moment, in the quiet kitchen with no one watching.
Then she went back to the numbers.