Shaman's Crossing (50 page)

I wrote nightly to my uncle, as he had requested, and received frequent missives in return. I was honest, as he had bade me be, and yet it made me feel that I was whimpering. He constantly told me to stand firm with my comrades and know that we acted in the best interest of the Academy and the cavalla by reporting such misdeeds, but it was hard to believe his encouraging words. I felt that at any time I might be the victim of a sneak attack: a flung snowball, more ice than snow, and the destruction of my model in the drafting room, and once, a crude name scrawled across the back of one of my letters. Nothing further happened to our rooms, for Sergeant Rufet had tightened his watch upon his domain, but that was a small comfort. Still, I looked forward to my uncle’s daily note as if it were a lifeline to keep me connected to a world outside the Academy. I had written my father my own letter of explanation, and my uncle assured me that he, too, had told my father what he knew of the incident. Nevertheless, I soon received a very cold letter from my father, reminding me of my duties to be honest and above reproach in all I did, lest I shame the family name. He said we would discuss the matter in detail in the spring when I came home to witness my brother’s wedding. He also wrote that I should have consulted him rather than my uncle on these matters. My uncle was not, after all, a soldier and did not know how matters such as these were handled within the military. Yet, even so, he did not write exactly what I should have done, and I did not have the spirit to keep the discussion alive in a second letter to him. I let the matter drop.

Spink, too, began to receive mail much more often than he had. I thought at first that the letters were from my uncle as well, but then I noticed that he never opened them in the bunkroom as the rest of us did our letters. Yet I only learned the truth the first time I encountered him in the library reading a letter. As I sat down beside him at the study table, he hastily turned aside from me, sheltering the pages with his body.

Some part of me must have suspected the truth before that, because I instantly found myself asking him, “And how is my cousin this week?”

He laughed embarrassedly as he hastily folded the pages and slipped them inside his jacket. He was blushing as he admitted, “Lovely. Amazing. Intelligent. Enchanting.”

“Strange!” I interjected, and then lowered my voice. I glanced about the library. There was another cadet two tables away, intent on his own studies, but other than him, we were alone.

I envied Spink for a moment; I had not heard from Carsina in two weeks. I knew she could only send me a letter when she visited my sister, but still I wondered if her interest in me was waning. In a shocking moment, my envy turned greener. Spink had met a girl, and on his own decided that he liked her. And she liked him in return. I thought of Carsina, and she suddenly seemed a sort of hand-me-down, a connection passed on to me born of my father’s alliance and my sister’s friendship. Did she like
me
? If we had met one another casually, would we have felt any attraction? How much, really, did I know of her? I suddenly recognized Epiny’s insidious influence on my thinking. Her ideas about choosing your own mate, modern as they might be, had nothing to do with my needs. I was sure my father had selected a good cavalla wife for me, one who would understand her duty to her mate amid the hardships we might have to face together. What would Epiny know about the characteristics of a stable husband? Would Spink find that strength in Epiny, if he did manage to win her? How would her séances and glass curtains and foolish ideas sustain her in a border home with her husband often away on patrol? With that thought, I pushed my envy aside and said to Spink, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Epiny. I think I should speak to my uncle about her interest in séances and spirits and her experiments. For Epiny’s own sake, he should know what his daughter is meddling in, before she harms her reputation. What do you think?”

Spink shook his head at me. “It would only incite a battle between them, to no good end, I think. Your cousin is a strong-willed woman, Nevare. I don’t think she is ‘meddling’ in anything. She has touched something that frightens her, and yet she does not retreat from it. She has written to me of how terrifying both experiences were. But instead of fleeing, she girds herself against it and plunges into battle again, to find out what it is. And do you know why she is now so intent on it?”

I shrugged. “Is it one of her ‘paths to power’ she spoke about? A way to gain unnatural influence over others?”

Spink looked as insulted as if she were his own cousin. Little sparks of anger danced in his eyes as he said, “No, you moron! She says it is because she fears for
you
. She…She says—” He unfolded the letter and began to quote from it. “ ‘I do not know with whom he battles for control of his soul, but I will not leave him to face her alone.’ Those are her very words. And she sends me a long list of books she is trying to find, ones that she does not have easy access to. She asks that I look within the Academy library for them. Most have to do with anthropological studies of the Plains people and discourses on their religions and beliefs. She is convinced that a Plainswoman has cast some sort of spell over you or cursed you and seeks to bend you to her will with her magic.” He stopped and swallowed, then looked at me from the corner of his eyes, as if reluctant to admit he’d been playing a silly game. “She says…she writes that a part of your aura has been captured and walks in another world. That possibly you do not even realize that you no longer belong completely to yourself, but are partially controlled by this, this ‘other spiritual entity.’ That’s what she calls it.”

“That’s rubbish!” I said hotly, in both embarrassment and sudden fear. Then I realized that the other cadet was staring at us in annoyance, his work neglected before him. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Epiny is just playing a game, Spink, to make herself fascinating to you. It’s all pretend, every bit of it. And I would be remiss in my duty as a cousin if I did not speak to my uncle about it. She is still just a child, and my aunt should not be exposing her to such things. The awkward part, for me, is that it’s really my aunt’s fault that she has been allowed to pursue such nonsense.”

“I cannot stop you from writing to your uncle about it,” Spink said quietly. “Just as I can only ask you that you do not tell him that Epiny is sending me letters. If it makes you feel any better, I will admit that as of yet, we have not found any way for me to send responses to her. I’ve never written back to her. You know that my intentions toward her are entirely honorable. I’ve already written to both my mother and my brother to ask them to approach your uncle on my behalf.”

I was speechless for a moment. I could only imagine the courage it must have taken for him to approach his older brother with his desire to choose his own wife. Then all I could say, quite heartily, was, “You know I am on your side in this, Spink. I will speak well of you at every opportunity. Though I still think you could do better for yourself!”

He grinned even as he narrowed his eyes and warned me, “Now, speak no ill of my future lady, cousin, or we shall have to take it to the dueling grounds!”

I laughed aloud at that, and then stifled my laugh as I saw Caulder emerge from between two rows of shelved books. He did not glance at us and walked quickly out of the library. Only my abrupt silence and stare alerted Spink to his presence. “Do you think he overheard us?” he asked me worriedly.

“I doubt it,” I replied. “If he had, it would be very unlike Caulder simply to walk away. He’d have to say something.”

“I’ve heard his father has told him he isn’t to have anything to do with the Carneston House first-years.”

“Really. Now that would be the greatest kindness Stiet has done us this year.”

We both laughed at that, and earned ourselves a glare and a “sshhh” from the cadet at the next table.

Our studies only became more demanding as the year progressed. The grind of drill, classes, dull meals, and long assignments completed by lantern light carried us into the dim corridor of winter. Winter seemed harsher here in the city than it ever had out on the good, clean plains. The smoke of thousands of stoves filled the winter air. When snow did fall, it was soon speckled with soot. The melting water could not find the drains fast enough; the lawns of the Academy were sodden and the pathways became shallow canals that we splashed through as we marched. Winter seemed to wage a battle against the city, blanketing us with fresh snow and cold freezes, and then the next day giving way to wet fogs and slush underfoot. The snow that fell on the paths and streets of the Academy was soon trampled to a dirty sorbet of ice and mud. The trees stood stark on the lawns, their wet black branches imploring the skies to lighten. We rose before it was light, slopped through the slush to assembly, and then slogged through our classes. Grease our boots as we might, our feet were always wet, and in between inspections, damp socks festooned our rooms like holiday swags. Coughing and sneezing became commonplace, so that on the mornings when I woke with a clear head, I felt blessed. It seemed that our troop no sooner recovered from one sniffling onslaught than the next came along to lay us low. Sickness had to be extreme before we were either excused from classes or permitted into the infirmary, so most of us dragged through the days of illness as best we could.

Even so, all those miseries would have been bearable, for they fell on all of us alike, first-years, upperclassmen, officers, and even our instructors, but shortly after Spink and I returned from our days away from the Academy, our fellow new noble first-years and we became the targets of a different sort of misery.

There had always been differences in how the new noble first-years were treated compared to the sons of the older families. We had joked about being given the poorest housing choices, endured Corporal Dent making us eat later than our fellows, and hunched our shoulders to the fact that we received a rougher initiation than that inflicted on first-years of old nobility. Our instructors had seemed aloof from it for the most part. Occasionally they remonstrated with us to uphold the dignity of the Academy despite being new to its traditions. It made us bitterly amused, for no son of any old noble could say that his father had ever attended any sort of military academy, yet many of our fathers had graduated from the old War College. The traditions of a military upbringing were in our bones, while our old noble fellows learned them only now.

Our classes had been scrupulously segregated for the first third of the year. We always sat in our patrols. New nobles’ sons did not fraternize with the sons of old nobles, despite sometimes sharing the same classrooms. Now our instructors began, not to mingle us, but to make us compete against one another. With increasing frequency, our test scores were listed by patrol and were posted side by side outside the classroom doors, where all could see that the new noble patrols consistently lagged behind the old nobility first-years in academics. The exceptions were drafting and engineering, where we often excelled them, and in drill and on horseback, in which they could not best us.

As our instructors began to encourage the rivalry between the two groups, I saw healthy competition take on a darker character. One afternoon we raced into the stables, sure that we would triumph over our rivals in an equestrian drill exercise, only to discover that someone had crept in and smeared dung stripes down the sides and flanks of our mounts and filled their tails with burrs. The hasty grooming we had time for was inadequate, and left our horses looking ill kempt. We were marked down for that, and though we won for precision, we lost for overall appearance, and thus the cup and the half day of liberty went to the old nobility troop.

We muttered at the unfairness of it. Then several of the scale models that belonged to Bringham House old nobility first-years were ruined immediately before a judging, leaving Carneston House the winners. Foul play was suspected, and I found it hard to take joy in the victory. My construction of a suspension bridge had been, I felt, so superior that we would have been assured the win without the sabotage. It was very difficult to write my letter to my uncle that night, for I felt that I had to be honest in stating my suspicions of my own fellows.

At about that time, I had a final encounter with Cadet Lieutenant Tiber. Rumors about him had died down at the Academy. I had heard little about him and seen even less. Thus I was a bit surprised to encounter him one evening as I returned from the library to Carneston House. We were both bundled in our greatcoats as we approached one another in the semidarkness. He walked with a marked lurch to his gait now, probably as the result of his still-healing injuries. His head was down, his eyes on the snowy path before him. I was tempted to pretend I didn’t recognize him and simply hurry past him. Instead, as was right, I stepped to the side of the path to give him the way and snapped a salute to him. He returned my salute in passing and kept going. An instant later he rounded on his heel and came back to me. “Cadet Nevare Burvelle. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. That’s my name.”

Then he let a silence fall. I listened to the wind and felt dread build within me. Then he said, “Thank you for coming forward with those names. I didn’t know who jumped me. When Ordo claimed to have seen me drunk and staggering, I suspected, of course. But your saying Jaris’s name aloud was what made it certain for me.”

“I should have come forward sooner, sir.”

He cocked his head at me. “And why didn’t you, Nevare Burvelle? That is something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“I wasn’t sure…if it was honorable. To speak suspicions without having any facts. And…” I quickly forced the truth past my lips. “I was afraid they’d take revenge on me.”

He nodded, unsurprised. Nothing in his face condemned me. “And did they?”

“In small ways. Nothing I can’t endure.”

He nodded again, and gave me a small, cold smile. “Thank you for facing up to your fear and coming forward. Don’t think yourself a coward. You could have never mentioned it to your uncle, or when the time came, lied and said you’d seen nothing. I wish I could tell you that you’d be rewarded for it. You won’t. Remember, you were right to be cautious of them. Don’t underestimate them. I did. And now I limp. Don’t forget what we’ve learned.”