Islands in the Sky

2.10

“And now my turn,” Cassa’s grandmother said, still smiling, still cheerful, almost as if this was fun. “Let me tell you why you must wed. We need an alliance. Our influence has slipped over the years, and we need to strengthen it now. We need an alliance, any alliance, so we do not stand alone. We need that for the time when I am gone. For the time when my secrets are gone with me, and the opportunistic friends I have made are gone too, when there is just you, trying to hold onto what we have, when all those around us have begun to feel greedy.”

“Not soon,” Cassa said, a little distressed. She didn’t like to speak of her grandmother’s death.

“Not soon, I hope, but it must happen one day, and so we need to plan for it now.”

Cassa didn’t answer.

“It will. All must die. And so we must plan. It is the way of it.”

Cassa nodded, a little reluctantly.

“This wedding will help you,” her grandmother said. “If it is you who takes my place. The family needs alliances, and you do as well. With this marriage, you will be stronger. You will have allies outside this tower. And especially in the early days, when you have first taken over, then that will be your greatest strength of all.”

Cassa sighed.

“It is true,” her grandmother said. “And it is for the best.”

“I suppose so,” Cassa said, then, “Am I to take your place?”

Her grandmother smiled. “If you mother and her sisters and yours cannot stop you. If your brothers cannot either. Then yes, you will take my place.”

Cassa nodded. That was as much of a promise as she would ever get.

Cassa’s inheritance was almost assumed, in private, between her and her grandmother. They both assumed, and Cassa knew she had her grandmother’s blessing, and Cassa’s mother, who had the strongest other claim as the oldest daughter, had as much as said she would step aside for Cassa because Cassa was more capable. All the same, no inheritance could ever be taken for granted. Cassa was the only daughter of the oldest daughter, and that counted for something, but it could as easily be a cousin, or an aunt, or even one of her brothers, who successfully pressed a better claim.

Not a brother, though. That wasn’t likely. Cassa’s family, the Middletowers, followed the old custom of tracing inheritance through the female side of a family. Women gave birth, so women inherited property, because then property stayed within a family and was not lost to love-affairs and adultery. It was an old law, a good law, and it protected what the family had, because like all the old, powerful families, their only real property was the tower. They had trade, and businesses, and many who owed them favours, but all that was fleeting, and could disappear at any moment. The tower was a thing, a piece of property which could be held, and it was security, too, strong walls and a door which could be barred, to keep those inside safe. That counted. That was real. Safety and security were important, in a world born in a terrible war. All else, the trade and wealth and webs of influence, that was simply dust and wheat-chaff, which might blow away in the wind. The tower was what mattered. It would be inherited by one of the family, and with it would go the family’s power.

Cassa expected to inherit, but she was in no hurry to do so soon. Besides her fondness for her grandmother, and her considerable lack of ambition, it was wise to wait, sensible to wait, because her grandmother was good at what she did. Her grandmother was wise, perhaps the wisest person Cassa had ever met. She was patient and clever and cunning, and Cassa tried to learn from that. Cassa tried to learn, and knew she was not nearly as skilled, and so most of all, Cassa was not such a fool as to let some misplaced ambition weaken the family by trying prematurely to seize control, and in doing so, lose her grandmother’s skill and counsel.

Cassa understood it was best to wait, and her grandmother knew that she did, and that was probably a great part of why Cassa was the most likely heir. Her grandmother hadn’t needed to squash Cassa to keep the family safe, the way she had others in the past.

Cassa would wait. Even though there were times when the waiting was almost as irritating as not waiting would be, moments such as this.