Lluc's mother was the head housekeeper in the lord's house (not even a baron, just somebody with some land who collected taxes, but it matters not at all to the people he collects them from). She was the type to lord this over every one of her subordinates down to the smallest scullery. Who Lluc's father was nobody seemed to know; if his mother knew she wasn't telling, at least. But he found work running messages and then when he was a bit bigger in the stables, looking after the horses, training the horses, cleaning up after the horses, setting slips to break in the foals too small for a grown man to ride, appropriating grain for the horses when there is a logistical hiccup and it doesn't arrive on time and only swiping a little of it for himself to trade for cash and imports and suchlike. He does not rise to the rank of stablemaster, because that position is reserved for one of the lord's favored acknowledged bastards, but he gets right up next to that post and will have it if the other fellow dies or takes a bad hoof first.
He doesn't marry, because the lord indulges in that custom where marrying is inviting him to fuck your wife, and he knows perfectly well the lord could fuck his wife but he doesn't care to have a ceremony about it. He takes up more quietly with the laundress, a washout wizardess who nevertheless seems very bright to Lluc yet not so powerful as to put on airs. If anybody else knows whose her child is they aren't telling, but he funnels his skimmed-off grain in her direction, and when he exercises the horses he happens to stop by her house and pick up the little girl and pretend to eat her plump little cheeks. It wouldn't be very hard to figure out that they are married but for the separate housing arrangements, except that no one cares.
A lot of the horses are killed in action when the lord is called to provide cavalry for the war. The lord himself is killed also. The stables are nearly empty. The stablemaster is missing. The lord's heir, his eldest daughter (he had no legitimate sons), sells the last horses and dismisses the horse-related staff. It's not obvious how she means to take care of any of the responsibilities of a lord without mounts and cart-pullers and suchlike, until it turns out that she's planning to install a school friend of hers to raise skeleton horses who will not need any such tender care.
So Lluc is out of a job, and he finally moves in with his not-wife since it doesn't seem likely the lady will take the same liberties as the lord enjoyed, and they have another baby on the way, and he finds some seasonal work bringing in the harvest, and then an archmage kidnaps him and he is not sure he will ever get to eat this next one's plump cheeks.
