Shaman's Crossing (51 page)

He spoke to me as if I were his friend. His words made me brave. “I trust you are recovering well and that your studies go well?”

His smile grew stiffer. “I’ve recovered as much as I’m likely to. And my studies have come to an end, Cadet Burvelle. I’ve received my first posting. I’m off to Gettys. As a scout.”

It was a bad post and a worse assignment. We stood facing one another in the cold. There was no polite congratulation I could offer. “It’s a punishment, isn’t it?” I finally asked hopelessly.

“It is and it isn’t. They need me there. The building of the King’s Road has come to a virtual halt there and I’m to move among the Specks in their forest and find out why. Ostensibly, I’m well suited for the task. Good at languages, good at engineering. I should be able to scout out the best route for the road and make friends with the wild people. Maybe I’ll find out why we can’t seem to make any forward progress. Everyone gets something they want out of it. I get work I like and I’m good at. The administration gets me out of the way and in a position where I can never hope to rise to any appreciable rank.”

I found I was nodding to his words. They made sense. Reluctantly, I told him, “Earlier this year, Captain Maw said I’d make a good scout.”

“Did he? Then I expect you will. He said the same thing to me when I was a first-year.”

“But I don’t want to be a scout!” The words burst from me. I was horrified at his prophecy.

“I doubt that anyone does, Nevare. When the time comes, try to recognize that Maw means well by intervening in that way. He’d rather see promising cadets serve in some capacity of worth, rather than being culled or sent to useless posts to count blankets or buy mutton for the troops. It’s his way of saying you’re worth something, even if you are a battle lord’s son.”

The silence that followed his words hung between us. Finally, he broke it, saying, “Wish me luck, Burvelle.”

“Good luck, Lieutenant Tiber.”

“Scout Tiber, Burvelle. Scout Tiber. I’d best get used to it.” He saluted me and I returned it. Then he walked away from me into the cold and the dark. I stood still, shivering, and wondered if I was doomed to follow in his footsteps.

W
inter deepened and we drew ever closer to Dark Evening. At my father’s house in Widevale, Dark Evening had been a night for prayers and meditation and floating candles on the pond or the river, followed by a celebration the next morning of the lengthening of the days. My mother had always given each of us a small but useful gift in celebration of the turning of the year, to which my father added a yellow envelope containing spending money. It had been a minor but pleasant holiday each year.

Thus I was astonished to hear my fellows speak of Dark Evening with enthusiasm and anticipation as it drew near. The Academy itself would offer a feast to us on Dark Evening’s Eve, followed by two days of liberty for all cadets in good standing. There were also plays in the playhouses, and the king and queen gave a grand ball in Sondringham Hall in Old Thares, to which the senior cadets were invited. For the younger cadets, there would be carnival and street performers and dancing in the guildhalls. We were sternly admonished that we could attend such events only in uniform, and thus must be on our best behavior, not just for our own reputations, but also for the honor of the Academy. I looked forward to it as something I’d never experienced before.

Caleb was shocked to hear that I knew so little of Dark Evening. I thought he was teasing me when they told me that on Dark Evening all whores went masked and gave away their favors for free, and that some ladies of good houses sneaked out into the streets on that night, and pretended to be women of pleasure so that they might sample the favors of strange men without danger to their reputations. When I challenged the truth of this, he showed me several lewdly illustrated stories in some of his cheap folios of adventure tales. Despite my better judgment, I read the accounts of women seduced by one wild night in the city and thought them as appalling as they were unlikely. What sane woman would leave her safe and comfortable home simply to indulge in one night of licentiousness?

Privately, I asked Natred and Kort if they had ever heard such a thing. To my surprise, they assured me that they had. Natred said that his older cousins had told him of it. Kort added that his father said it was a vestige of one of the old gods’ celebrations. “It’s mostly a western custom. The temples of the old gods are still standing in a lot of the older cities, and people remember a lot more about those gods and their customs. Especially the celebrations they had. Dark Evening used to belong to a women’s god. That was what I heard. My mother used to tell stories about Dark Evening to my sisters. Not about running around acting like a whore, but old tales, of girls meeting masked gods at Dark Evening celebrations, and being granted gifts by them, like spinning straw into gold or being able to dance two inches above the floor. Just pretty stories.

“Then one year my father caught my three sisters dancing in the dark in the garden in just their knickers. He was very upset about it, but my mother asked him what harm could it do, so long as there were no young men about. He said it was the idea of it, and forbade them to ever do such a thing again. But”—and Kort leaned closer to us, as if fearing that someone else might hear—“I think they still keep the holiday that way.”

“Even my Talerin?” Natred asked intently. I could not tell if he was scandalized or delighted.

“I do not know for sure,” Kort cautioned him. “But I have heard that many women have rituals and rites of their own for Dark Evening. Sometimes I think that there is much about our women that we do not know.”

Such talk made me wonder about my own Carsina. For an instant I imagined Carsina dancing near naked in a darkened garden. Would she? I suddenly did not know if I hoped she did or didn’t. Were there rites and rituals that women observed and we men knew nothing about? Were they all in the service of the good god or did women secretly still worship at some of the old altars? Such questions whetted my curiosity for Dark Evening in Old Thares. To be turned loose in the great old city with my fellows, a man among men on a wild festival night, was something I had never imagined. I counted up my allowance that I had hoarded and felt that the holiday would never come.

In the middle of that week, what began as a good-natured snowball fight with the old nobility first-years from Drakes Hall turned into a nasty pitched battle, with ice and rocks replacing the earlier missiles. I had been at the library, and only learned of it through Rory’s retelling when our patrol gathered at the study table that night. Rory had a black eye and Kort a swollen lip to show for it. The skirmish had dissolved when several older cadet officers had come upon the scene. Even so, Rory was rejoicing over making an antagonist “bleed some of that fine old blood out of his fine old nose.” Trist had also been a participant, as had Caleb. Oron had only witnessed it and yet seemed more upset than Rory. Twice he said aloud, “I just don’t understand it. We are all cadets here. What could have made them hate us so suddenly?”

The second time he said it, Gord shut his book with a sigh. “Don’t any of you read the newspapers?” he asked, and did not wait for the reply before adding, “The Council of Lords just voted about taxation for the King’s Road. The old nobles opposed it, arguing that they need their moneys for roads and improvements in their own territories rather than ‘the road to nowhere,’ as Lord Jarfries called it. The old nobility had expected to easily defeat the proposal to channel a portion of their tax income to King Troven’s coffers for the road. I even read that some of them laughed aloud when a new noble named Lord Simem first proposed it. Yet when the ballots were counted, three times and no less, the vote was in favor of taxation for the King’s Road.”

He said this as if it were of immense importance. We all stared at him silently. “Puppies!” he said at last in disgust. “Think about what it means. It means that enough old nobles crossed the line to vote with the new nobles, secretly, that the king is regaining a stronger hand in the country. The old nobles who thought that power was coming slowly but surely into their hands have suffered a major setback. They resent it, and because of it, they and their sons resent us all the more. They thought they were on the path to running this country, with the king as little more than a figurehead. But for our fathers, it would have come true. The old nobility would have continued a slow march upon the monarchy, taking more power and control for themselves, retaining more taxes, building more wealth…Don’t any of you see what I’m talking about?” Sudden frustration broke in his voice.

“The good god put King Troven over all of us, to rule us justly and well. All of the Holy Writ tells us that the lords should serve their king as a good son serves his father, in obedience, respect, and gratitude for his guidance.” Oron said this so solemnly that I nearly bowed my head and signed the air with the good god’s sign. He sounded more like a bessom at that moment than Gord ever had.

Gord snorted. “Yes. So we have all been brought up to believe, every soldier son of us, every son of a new noble father. But what do you think the old nobles have told their first sons and their soldier sons? Do you think they have been taught their first duty is to the king, or to their own noble fathers?”

“Treason and heresy!” Caleb said angrily. He pointed a finger at Gord accusingly and said, “Why do you say such things?”

“
I
don’t! I serve the king as willingly as any man here. I only say that perhaps we have been brought up not to question, and as a result, you do not understand those who
do
question. You do not see how our loyalty might offend those who are not so blindly loyal themselves.”

“Blindly loyal!” Rory was incensed. “What’s blind about knowing that we owe the king our loyalty? What is blind about knowing our duty?”

Gord sat back in his chair. Something hardened in his face. He had changed in the last couple of weeks, in a way I could not clearly define. He was still as fat; he still sweated through drill and panted with the effort of heaving his bulk up the stairs. But somehow there seemed to be something of steel in him now. When he had first joined us, he had laughed along with his mockers when people made jokes about his weight, and sometimes even made fun of himself. Now he kept silent and merely stared at those who baited him. It seemed to make some of the fellows angry, as if he had no right to stand on his dignity and refuse to accept their mockery as his due. Now he looked round the table at those of us gathered there, and I suddenly perceived that it was not just math he was good at. There was more intellect behind those piggy little eyes than I had credited him with. He licked his plump lips, as if deciding whether to speak or not. Then the words seemed to break forth from him, not in a torrent, but in a deliberate cascade of derision.

“I said blindly, not stupidly, Rory. I don’t think it’s stupid for us and for our fathers to give loyalty to a man who benefited us greatly. But we should not be blind to what he gains by it, nor to what it does to others. Did none of your fathers ever discuss politics with you? When we take our history lessons, do any of you listen? We are to be officers and gentlemen when our schooling is done. Loyalty is fine, but it is even better when it is backed up with intellect. My dog is loyal to me, and if I sicced him on a bear, he would go with no questioning of whether I knew what was best for him. But we are not dogs, and though I believe a soldier must go where he is ordered and do as he is told, I do not think he must march forth in ignorance of what propels his commander’s decisions.”

Caleb had never been especially quick-witted, and that day he decided that Gord’s words had insulted him. He came to his feet and loomed over the table. His long, skinny frame made it difficult for him to look threatening, but he knotted his fist and said, “Are you saying my father is ignorant just because he didn’t talk politics at me? Take it back!”

Gord did not stand up but he didn’t back down. He leaned back in his chair as if to disarm Caleb’s aggression, but spoke firmly. “I can’t take it back, Caleb, for that isn’t what I said! I was speaking in generalities. We all came here, I hope, knowing that our first year is a winnowing process. We expected to be hazed and to have strict teachers and boring food and a burden of assignments and marching and tasks that no sane man would ever make his daily regimen. Yet we undertake it, knowing full well, I trust, that they deliberately make it more difficult and stressful than it needs to be. They are hoping that the weak and even the not-very-determined will be dissuaded by the process and turn away. Better to cull them out now than to have a battle whittle them away, with other men losing their lives in the process! So we do obey, but we do not obey blindly. That is what I am saying. That we endure what we endure here because we know the reason for it. And when I am a cavalla officer in the field, I expect that I will do the same there. I will obey my commander’s orders, but I hope I will remain intelligent enough to discern the reasons behind my orders.”

He looked round at us all. Despite ourselves, we were hanging on his words. He nodded, as if in appreciation of that, and went on, almost as if he were lecturing us, “And thus we come back to Oron’s question: what makes the old nobility first-years dislike us so much if we are all cadets here? And the answer is, they are taught to. Just as we are subtly schooled to resent them. It probably began as a way to wring the best out of us, just as they encourage each house and troop to compete against their fellows. But the politics of our fathers have infected it now, and made it something uglier.”

“But why? Why does someone want us to hate each other?” Oron clasped his cheeks and practically wailed the words.

Gord gritted his teeth for a moment and then sighed. “I didn’t say that anyone had deliberately set us against each other in a serious way. I
am
saying that what the Academy began as healthy competition between us has changed to something more ominous because of the political situation in the streets. That it may even be getting out of control within our walls, becoming something far more vicious than our superiors ever intended. It is in the king’s best interest to have his cavalla officers enjoy solid camaraderie. It is certainly in the cavalla’s best interest, and hence the Academy’s. But there will still be some, old nobles and new, who think we should despise each other because our fathers voted against each other in the Council of Lords. And if someone deliberately wanted to damage the power of the new nobles, if someone wanted to find a way to weaken our father’s alliance, they’d find a way to turn us against each other. That hasn’t happened yet, but it will be very interesting to see what pressures are applied to us. That is all I’m saying.”

“Oh, that was so enlightening,” Trist said. He had been silent up until then, though I had twice seen him roll his eyes during Gord’s discourse. “Do you honestly think there’s a man in this room who hasn’t already seen what is going on and given thought to it?”

Instantly it seemed that every cadet at the table was nodding, though I seriously doubted that any of us had pondered it through as Gord had.

“Not all of us must take a beating before we understand what the currents are in the Academy,” Trist added, somehow making it seem Gord’s own fault that he had been attacked.

I took a deep breath to say my piece on that, but closed my lips as I heard a too-familiar voice say, “Perhaps you shouldn’t blame a beating on politics. Some of your fellow cadets think having a pig in their midst is bad for the Academy.”

I wondered how long Caulder had been standing out of sight beside the door before he chose to enter.

“What do you want here?” Spink asked him waspishly.

Caulder smiled nastily. “You, actually. Not that I want you; quite the contrary! But for some reason my father wishes to see you. Immediately. You are to report to him at his office in the administration building.” His gaze slid from Spink to Trist. I thought I saw a shadow of pain in his eyes, and he sounded almost like a scorned lover as he said, “Still laughing over your fine jest on me, Trist? How stupid of me to trust someone like you and think you might want my friendship.”