Shaman's Crossing (46 page)

“Then, when he turned his eyes to the east and began a determined expansion, we had to ask ourselves, who would pay for this new war? Will the king bully us to lend money again, just as our own fortunes are starting to recover? The Council of Lords were determined it would not be so. We had grown stronger and more resolute in limiting what percentage of our taxes we would turn over to the monarchy. Even when the wars in the east went well and we began to see the profits of victory, some nobles asked one another, ‘Why do we need a king at all? Why cannot we govern ourselves?’ ”

Spink and I had remained as still and silent as children listening to a bogey tale. This was certainly not the history I had been taught. I suddenly wondered if this was yet another of the differences between first sons and soldier sons. The treason of that thought shocked me at first, but I faced it in my heart. Then I wondered at how naive I had been, that one talk with my uncle could reorder my whole view of the world. I asked my question carefully, fearing he would think me a traitor. “Does the king deliberately cultivate fractiousness between his old nobles and his battle lords?”

“It would be in his best interest to keep them at odds,” my uncle replied carefully. “If ever all his nobles united…well. Some would say, not I, of course, but some would again say, ‘What use do we have for a king?’

“When King Troven first turned his excursions into the east, they brought fresh wealth to nobles stripped of resources by years of war. Game meat, salted in barrels, came to our tables, and it was a new thing for many of us to have as much meat as we wanted, for our own flocks and herds had dwindled in the war years. The land that was opened up for farming yielded rich harvests, at first. We feared the competition from our battle lord brothers. But now they are finding that even letting those prairie fields lie fallow does not restore their productivity. Our crops are still in demand. In the east, there are new orchards and vineyards and fish from the streams, and more demands for the goods we manufacture as our excess population moves eastward. The only difficulty is moving the goods, and the difficulty of that adds delay, cost, and inconvenience. The king anticipates rich revenues if he can finish his King’s Road. I am one of the nobles who see a great promise. The lumber and forest goods that travel intermittently to us now on barges and occasional wagons would become a steady flow, and there is a market for that lumber in Landsing as well as here at home. I can see that all would benefit if the King’s Road were finished. But some think it is folly to imagine that might be done in our lifetimes. To finish his road, he must have laborers and coins to pay them. And that is where he runs into conflict with his old nobles. For the old nobles would like to keep their laborers and their coins to work on our own needs here in the west.”

“I thought the convicts were building the road,” I interrupted.

“Convicts labor much as mules do. A good driver can get solid work out of them, but if the driver is lazy or absent, the mules are useless. In the case of the convicts, they can be worse than useless; they can be trouble of a destructive nature in our new towns and on the frontier. When they have served out their time, few of them wish to settle to peaceful lives of hard work and modest returns. Some become robbers on the highway trade, preying on the very King’s Road they helped to build. Others return to being the drunks, thieves, and whoremasters they were here in the west. When you are stationed to your first posts, you will discover that our cavalla and foot soldiers are used as much to keep order in our border towns as they are to calm the savages and advance the king’s claims. You and Spink are soldiers in a troubled time, Nevare. I understand why my brother has kept you innocent of these intrigues, but soon, as an officer, you will have to navigate those uneasy waters. I think it is best that you know what you will face.”

“I thank you, sir, for sharing these things with me, also.” Spink spoke grimly. “My family’s holdings are closer to the borders, and I know that often we have had to defend our people, not from savages but from roving bands of outlaws. To hear the other cadets speak of their homes and peaceful upbringings made me wonder if perhaps we are the only folk so troubled. Now I see that we are not. But I still do not understand why brother should stand against brother in this. Surely the nobles, closely related as they are, could band together to act for the greater good of their king and themselves.”

“Some of us believe that to be true. Obviously my brother and I have kept our close bonds, and feel it is in our best interests to continue them. But other families felt betrayed when the king ‘stole’ their soldier sons. Many nobles felt that the lands granted to the soldier sons as their noble portions should have instead been given to the first sons of the families, to hold in trust for their soldier brothers. Why, they wonder, did the king not enrich them instead of their soldier brothers?”

“But the soldiers had earned both honor and estates! They were the ones who shed their blood and risked their lives to gain those lands for the king.”

“So the soldier son sees it, of course. But tradition was that honors and rewards that the soldier son earned were for his family, not himself. There are now noble families who have sons who have openly expressed the ambition that if they do great deeds in battle, they too may rise to the status of lords. And I fear that not all soldier sons who have risen to noble titles have conducted themselves nobly. Many were ill prepared to deal with wealth and power. They have squandered what was granted to them, and are now in debt or disgrace. Yet even so, they are ‘lords’ with the option of voting in the Council of Lords. They are vulnerable to those who would buy influence. Thus it is that many old families feel vulnerable to the new nobility in many ways.”

“But…but how do we threaten them? Or our fathers, I mean.” Spink was genuinely puzzled.

“The new nobility threatens our power, and in some cases, our dignity. But most of all, they cripple our ability to advance our own goals, which may be different from the king’s. For the king, the benefits of division among his nobles are undeniable. The Council of Lords is seldom able to achieve a majority vote with a quorum on any question, let alone the questions that relate directly to taxation or the king’s authority. But even on matters such as boundaries and regulating the trade guilds and constructing works for the good of all, such as building bridges, we now have difficulty in reaching a consensus. Often new nobles in the outlying areas have no care to attend the sessions or vote on things that seem not to have any impact on them. Why should they be taxed to lay rail lines in Old Thares? Then, to accomplish these things, we are forced to send an advisory to the king, who then commands that things should be so.”

“If the nobles get what they want, why do they care?” I asked. I knew the answer but I was suddenly feeling stubborn. Were these the reasons that soldier sons of new nobility were treated poorly at the Academy? Things we had no control over?

My uncle gave me a long look. Then he answered and did not answer me at once. “All men long to be in control of their own lives. Even a loyal servant, given authority over his master’s business, will soon wish for more authority, and the right to profit when he runs it well. It is human nature, Nevare. Once a man has had authority over his own affairs, he does not surrender it easily.”

Saying that seemed to rouse some strong emotion in him. He stood, rolled his shoulders, and then strode across the room. He refilled his glass of brandy. When he turned back to us, he said more calmly, “But I remain one of the old nobles who is convinced of the wisdom of the king’s current ambitions. I think there is wealth to be found in expanding our borders. I think that if we can gain a seaport on the Rustian Sea, on the far side of the Barrier Mountains, we could gain trade contacts and alliances with the people of the far eastern lands. I know his dream seems far-fetched to many, but we live in a time of great change. Perhaps one must have big dreams and take large risks to increase our stature in the world.” He lowered his voice suddenly. “And here at home, I think we would be wiser to unite and support him in it than oppose him. And I am troubled that this jockeying of first sons has led to a division in the Academy, and trouble among our soldier sons. That should not be. It starts with hazing at the Academy, but where does it stop? That I do not even wish to consider.”

I think I learned that evening the difference between how first sons and second sons were educated. My uncle had taken something I had perceived as a problem that existed in the Academy among the students there and extrapolated the consequences of it into the greater world of our military. I am not sure at all that my father would have done so. I think he would have seen it as a lapse of discipline in the school and a flaw in the administrator. My uncle saw it as a grave symptom of something already affecting the larger community, and I could feel the depth of his concern.

I could think of nothing to reply to his remarks, and afterward we subsided into more general talk. When he bid us good night, Spink and I were subdued, and parted to our separate rooms without any further discussion.

Habit awoke me early the next morning, the one day of the week when I could have slept late. I tried to huddle back into my pillows, but my perverse conscience reminded me that today I must return to the Academy grounds and that I had not yet completed my schoolwork. With a groan, I stretched and rose. I was splashing my face at the washbasin when the door opened and Epiny sailed into the room. She was still in her nightgown and wrapper, her hair in long braids past her shoulder. She greeted me with, “What shall we do today? A séance, perhaps?” Her question was teasing. My reply was not.

“Absolutely not! Epiny, this is completely inappropriate! At your age, you should never enter a man’s bedchamber unannounced and still in your nightclothes!”

She stared at me for a moment and then said, “You’re my cousin. You don’t count as a man. Very well. If you are afraid to hold a séance, shall we go riding?”

“I have a lot of schoolwork to do. Please leave.”

“Very well. I told Spink that you’d probably prefer to stay behind. That leaves Sirlofty free for me, then.”

She turned and started to leave. I said, “You and Spink are going riding? When was this decided?”

“We had early breakfast together.”

“In your nightclothes?”

“Well, he was dressed, but I scarcely see the sense of getting dressed before we’ve decided what to do with the day. Now I shall go and put on my riding skirts.”

“That is scandalous!”

“It’s eminently sensible. If you knew how long it takes for a woman to dress, you would see that I’ve saved nearly an hour of my day. And there is no more precious commodity than time.” Her hand was on the doorknob. She opened the door.

I spoke hastily. “I’m going riding with you. On Sirlofty.”

She smiled at me over her shoulder. “You’d best hurry then if you expect to eat anything before we leave.”

Despite her claim of how long it took for a woman to dress, she was ready and waiting by the door before I had finished a very hurried breakfast. Spink was likewise eager to depart. He and Epiny stood in the foyer talking and laughing, she with her annoying whistle clamped between her teeth all the while. Her father bade us a good-natured farewell, for he would not budge from his leisurely breakfast and morning newspaper. I envied him, but could not tolerate the thought of Epiny showing off my horse to Spink.

Nevertheless, I was a bit disappointed. I had expected a groom to accompany us, so that Spink and I could safely gallop off without worrying about Epiny. Instead, we were her guardians. Spink was mounted on a borrowed white gelding, a well-trained saddle horse but one completely unfamiliar with any sort of military maneuvers. And Epiny chose that we would ride on the bridle paths parallel to the Grand Promenade in Cuthhew’s Park. I suspected that she enjoyed displaying herself to the proper young women riding in pony carts with their mothers or strolling the paths in groups of three or four with an earnest chaperone. And there was my cousin, her riding skirts barely coming to her shins, as if she were a girl of ten instead of a young woman, alone with two young men in cadet dress. I had not considered how we might appear to others when I had agreed to ride with her, and feared I would bring embarrassment to my uncle’s household. Surely rumors of this outing would fly back to my uncle’s wife. How could any of Epiny’s acquaintances know that I was her cousin and responsible for her that day? They would simply see her as out riding with two soldier sons. Epiny’s mother already disdained me. How could Epiny put me in a position where I would appear to deserve that scorn? I did what I could to present a respectable appearance. I kept our pace sedate. Several times she sighed loudly and looked exasperatedly at me. I ignored her, determined to behave properly in such a public place.

She was the one who suddenly put her gray mare into a gallop, forcing Spink and me to give chase and exciting all sorts of cries of alarm and consternation as we raced after her. Epiny clung like a burr to her mount, shrilling wildly through the otter whistle that she still gripped in her teeth. I wondered if she was too stupid to realize that the sound of the whistle was probably frightening her horse and provoking Celeste to even greater speed. I kicked Sirlofty to overtake her, but the path had narrowed and Spink and his gelding were in the way. I cried out to him to leave the path and give me clearance, but I do not think he heard me. A cyclist coming toward us wailed in alarm and crashed his machine into a laurel hedge to avoid us as we thundered past him. He shouted angrily after us.

Epiny guided her horse away from the commonly used paths and onto a lesser trail. We left the groomed environs of the park behind and soon raced, single file, down a bramble-choked winding path. Spink had his horse between my cousin and me, or Sirlofty could easily have outrun Epiny’s mare and let me catch her. Twice, fallen trees blocked the way, and each time her horse cleared the obstacle in a jump, I feared that I would be bringing her lifeless body home to my uncle. We came to an open area alongside the river, and there it was that she finally pulled in her mount.