by Robin Hobb
Caulder stared at me for a time and then said hoarsely, “You don’t look like you’ve been sick at all.” There was wonder in his voice.
“Well, I was.” I stared at the boy who had done me such a monstrous injustice, who had roused such hatred in me, and felt only cold inside me. I had feared I would lose my temper and shout at him. Now, looking at his wasted body and bloodshot eyes, I found that all I wanted was to be away from him. I spoke brusquely. “You wrote to me. You wanted to see me. You said you had something for me.”
“I did. I do.” The boy had managed to go paler. He turned to his bedside table and rummaged about in the mess there. “I took your rock. I’m sorry. Here it is. I want to give it back.” And with that, he held it out to me. I crossed the room in three strides. He almost cowered away from me as I took it out of his hand. “I know it was wrong to take it. I’d never seen one like it. I only meant to find out what it was from my uncle. He studies rocks and plants.”
I looked at the rough stone with its coarse veins of crystal and recalled too well how I had come by it. Did I really want anything that reminded me of that? A little shudder ran up my back at the thought of Tree Woman and her world. Well. I was done with that now. Epiny had said so, and although I did not want to believe her about anything else to do with her séances and spirits, I clung to that. Tree Woman’s shadow was no longer cast over me. I was free of her. I set the rock back on his table with a loud clack. “Keep it. I don’t want it anymore. Was that the only reason you wanted me to come?” My words came out more coldly than I’d intended. The memory of the tree woman was a chill one. I had loved her. I had hated her. I had killed her.
A tremor shook Caulder’s lower lip. For a terrifying moment, I thought he would crumple up and cry. Then he mastered himself and said in a stiff, almost angry voice, “I sent you that message because my father said I must. I told him I had lied about who got me drunk. So he said I must personally write to you, and when you came, I must apologize. I do. I apologize, Nevare Burvelle.” He took a deep and ragged breath. As I was still reeling from that revelation, he shook me further when he added in a whisper, “And I told him the rest about Jaris and Ordo. About them beating up that fat cadet, and Lieutenant Tiber. I apologize for that, too. But even though my father made me send you that note, that isn’t why I wanted you to come. There is something else I must say.”
He stared at me, and the silence grew uncomfortably long. I think he was waiting for me to say something. At last he said in a hoarse whisper, “Thank you for sending me back across the bridge. If you hadn’t, I would have gone on to that place. I would have died.” He suddenly hugged his arms around himself and started to shiver so violently that I could see it. “I have tried to tell my father about it, but he just gets angry with me. But I know…That is—” He halted his words and looked desperately around the room, as if to reassure himself it was there. His shaking became more pronounced. “What is real? Is this place more real than that one? Can the whole world suddenly give way around you and then we are someplace else? I think about that all the time now. I cannot sleep well at night. My father and the doctor drug me to make me close my eyes, but that is not the same as sleep, is it?”
“Caulder. Calm yourself. You are safe.”
“Am I? Are you? Do you think she couldn’t just reach out and snatch either of us back if she wished it?” He began to weep noisily.
I stepped to the door to his room and looked out into the hall for help. No one was in sight. “Caulder is not feeling well!” I called out loudly. “Could someone please come and take care of him?” I went back to his bedside and set a hand to his shoulder. I felt nothing of warmth toward him, only alarm. “She is gone now, Caulder. Forever. Calm down. Someone will be here soon to take care of you.”
“No!” Caulder wailed. “No. They’ll drug me again. Nevare. Please. Don’t call them. I’m calm now. I’m calm.” He hugged himself even tighter, and held his breath in an effort to stop his sobs.
I heard a door open and close and then footfalls in the hall. They seemed to be coming very slowly. I scrabbled desperately for a way to distract him from his terror. I did not wish to be blamed for working an invalid into hysteria. Awkwardly I asked, “Where will you be going now? To a family estate?”
It was the wrong question. “My father is, and he’s taking my mother. But he’s sending me away. I’m no good now. He hates me. He says I quiver like a lapdog and see danger in dustballs. A soldier son who will never be a soldier. What use am I in the world?” He picked up the rock and set it down again. “He was furious that I stole this from you. He thinks he will punish me by sending me to my uncle. Uncle Car has written to say he will be glad to have me and will adopt me so that he has a son to follow him. He says the scholar son has no need of a strong back or great courage, only a good mind. I don’t think I even have that anymore.”
“What is all this!” Colonel Stiet demanded from the door. But his voice was only an echo of his old bark. When I looked at him, I saw an old man in a dressing gown, leaning on a cane. He had two days’ growth of graying stubble on his chin, and his hair was uncombed. When he recognized me, he growled, “I might have known it would be you. Well. Do you have your satisfaction?”
I held up the letter Caulder had sent me. I did not intend that it slip from my hand, but it did, and it wafted through the air to lie at the colonel’s feet. “Your son asked me to come here. I did. I now understand that you made him extend the invitation.” I was surprised, not at the depth of my anger, but at the cold control I could maintain over my voice. I spoke flatly and met the old man’s eyes with a neutral stare.
He looked away from me to his son, and I saw horror and disgust war in his eyes. Then his mouth turned down in anger. “Well. I see you’ve had your revenge on him. I hope you enjoyed it, kicking a cringing puppy like Caulder. Are you satisfied, sir?” He repeated the word as if all of this were my fault.
“No, sir, I am not.” I spoke precisely. “You gave me a dishonorable discharge based on a lie. Am I still under that onus? Will it be a part of my record I must always carry with me? And what will you do about the cadets who were truly guilty of poisoning your son with cheap liquor and beating other cadets?”
He stood silent for a time. The sound of Caulder’s ragged breathing as he huddled in his chaise dominated the room. Then I clearly heard Colonel Stiet swallow. In a quieter voice he said, “No record remains of your dishonorable discharge. You can return to the Academy at any time, although I do not know when classes will resume. That is up to my successor. He is currently searching for instructors to replace the ones who died. Are you satisfied?”
Each time he asked me that, it was like an accusation. Did he think I was greedy, to demand justice and the return of my honor? “No, sir. I am not ‘satisfied.’ What will become of the cadets who were truly guilty of poisoning your son with cheap liquor?” I repeated my question as carefully and coldly as when I had first asked it.
“That is none of your affair, Cadet!” He coughed on his own vehemence. Then he added, “In my judgment, nothing is to be gained by profaning the honor of the dead. They are both dead of that foul pestilence. The good god will judge them for you, Cadet Burvelle. Will you be satisfied with that?”
I came as close to blasphemy as I ever have in my life when I replied, “I suppose I will have to be, sir. Good day, Colonel Stiet. Good day, Caulder.”
I walked past Colonel Stiet to reach the door of the room. As I passed out of it, Caulder showed that he did, perhaps, have a glimmer of a soldier’s courage in his soul. He lifted his shaking voice to call after me, “Thank you again, Nevare. May the good god protect you.” Then Colonel Stiet shut the door too firmly behind me. I listened to the sound of my boots as I thudded downstairs and let myself out of Colonel Stiet’s fine house.
I rode Sirlofty back to my uncle’s home and stabled him myself. I had thought myself well recovered, but that encounter had exhausted me. I went to my room, slept through the afterno
on, and then rose wakeful to the evening sky glowing in my window. My trunk had been brought to my uncle’s house, probably at the same time they’d delivered me to him. It looked as if everything from my bunkroom had been hastily thrown into it. I repacked it carefully. When I came to Carsina’s letters that I had bundled together, I opened them and deliberately read through each of them in order. What did I know of her? Next to nothing. Yet I still felt a sense of loss as I put each missive back in its envelope and once more tied them into a packet. I felt that Epiny and her attitude and her questions had taken something from me and made my life a bit harder. I found I still wished her and Spink the best of luck. I suspected they would need it.
I think that the horseback ride and my confrontation with Caulder and Colonel Stiet taxed me more heavily than my health was ready to bear. The next day, I found myself sweaty and sick again, and I kept to my bed for that day and the two that followed. Epiny and Spink were gone, and though my uncle visited my chamber, it was a brief visit. I believe he thought me moping more than ill.
On the third day, against my inclination, I rose and forced myself to go for a walk in the garden. The following day, I took a longer walk, and by the end of the week I felt that my recovery was once more on track. My appetite returned with a vengeance that startled me and frankly amazed the kitchen staff. My health came roaring back, and I felt that my body suddenly demanded both exercise and food to restore itself. I was very happy to give it both. When Dr. Amicus paid me a surprise visit, he bluntly said, “You’ve not only recovered your weight from before your illness, but added a layer of fat to it. Perhaps you should consider controlling your appetite.”
I had to grin to that. “It’s an old pattern in my family, sir. My brothers and I always put on a bit of flesh right before we shoot up in height. I’d thought I was finished growing, but I daresay I’m wrong. Perhaps by the time I return home for my brother’s wedding, I’ll be the tallest man in the family.”
“Well, perhaps,” he said guardedly. “But I shall want to see you in my offices every week after classes resume. Your recovery is unique, Cadet Burvelle, and I’d like to document it for a paper I’m writing on the Speck plague. Would you mind?”
“Not at all, sir. Anything I can do to help bring an end to the disease is no more than my duty.”
When, a week later, a servant brought me a letter from the King’s Cavalla Academy, I stared at it with misgiving for a long time before I could bring myself to open it. I dreaded that it would contain some final vindictive act from Colonel Stiet, a bad report and a dishonorable dismissal. Instead, when I opened it, it was simply a notice that the new commander had scheduled a reopening date for the Academy. All cadets were to report to their dormitories and be in residence within five days. He was reinstating military protocol regarding the gates to the Academy, and some cadets would be experiencing a change in quarters. I stared at it for some time, and I think that was when I finally realized that disaster had passed me by. I was alive, my health was returning, and I was still a cadet. The life I had always imagined for myself might still await me.
I went down to my uncle’s library and spent the entire night reading through my father’s military journals. If he had ever questioned his fate, it was not confided to paper. He wrote as a soldier should, impassively and concisely. He went there, he fought with those people, he won, and the next day he and his troop rode on. There was a lot of war and very little of life in his accounts. I set my father’s journals back and randomly pulled down several of the older ones. I found cramped handwriting, fading ink, and more accounts of dealing death. I admired Epiny’s ability to read them. Much of it was dull, and it surprised me that the business of killing people could become so commonplace as to be boring.
Toward morning, my uncle came down with a candle and found me there. “I thought I heard someone moving around down here,” he greeted me.
I finished shelving the journals I had pulled out. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to wake you. I couldn’t sleep and so I came here to read.”
He gave a dry laugh. “Well, if those journals didn’t put you to sleep, nothing will.”
“Yes, sir. I tend to agree with you.” Then we stood there, awkwardly.
“I’m glad to see you recovering so well,” my uncle said at last.
“Yes, sir. I plan on returning to the Academy tomorrow. If I may have the use of your carriage.”
“I think you should ride your horse, Nevare. There will be room for Sirlofty in the Academy stables now. Just yesterday Colonel Rebin held a big auction of the Academy riding horses that Colonel Stiet had acquired.” He actually smiled. “He advertised them as ‘suitable mounts for delicate ladies and very young children.’ I do not think he was impressed with Stiet’s choice of horseflesh.”
“Nor I, sir.” I found myself grinning back at him. It was such a small thing, to be able to ride my own horse in our formations, and yet it lifted my spirits tremendously.
My uncle laughed softly and then said, “Sir this. Sir that. Am I no longer your uncle, Nevare?”
I looked down. “After the trouble I brought into your house, I was not sure how you felt about me.”
“If you were the one who brought Epiny here, it escaped my notice, Nevare. No. I made my own trouble, and spoiled her as she grew. I was far too indulgent with her, and as a result, I have lost her. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. It is a long way to Bitter-springs, and a hard life that awaits her when she arrives.”
“I think she’ll be up to it, sir—Uncle Sefert.” I found that I believed my own words.
“I think she will, too. Well. Leaving tomorrow. I know we haven’t seen much of each other of late, but I’ll still miss you. So I will still expect you to spend your leave days here, visiting.”
“Will your lady wife be comfortable with that, Uncle Sefert?” I asked the question plainly, wishing to put it all out in the open.
“My lady wife is not comfortable with anything these days, Nevare. Let’s leave her out of it, shall we? Perhaps the next free day you get, you and Hotorn and I can go out and do some shooting together. I think I would like a bit of a holiday away from this city.”
“I should like that, too, Uncle Sefert.”
He hugged me before we parted for what remained of the night, and saw me off the next morning when I left on Sirlofty. He promised that he would send my trunk by cart within the hour.
I rose early and dressed in my uniform. It seemed snugger than it had when last I wore it, and I suspected I was due for yet another growth spurt. As I left my uncle’s house, a steady winter rain was falling and the gutters of the city ran full, as did some of the streets. I rode slowly, and tried to come to terms with all the changes I now must face. My emotions teetered between elation and regret. I was going back to the Academy and my career. But of my patrol, only Gord, Kort, Rory, Trist, and I remained. I wondered what the Academy would do with us and had to accept that I had no control over it.
When I reached the gates of the Academy, I found that a second-year cadet stood within the sentry box. He shouted a challenge to me when I tried to ride through. I halted, and when I gave my name, he consulted a list and told me the stall number for my horse and gave me a billet slip and had me sign a roster as “Returning to Duty.” We exchanged salutes and I rode on, feeling as if I had truly entered a military emplacement.
It was the same in the stables. Harried cadets were bustling at work when I arrived. I found Sirlofty’s stall and cared for him and my tack before I left him there. He was in good company. Other horses were arriving, tall, straight-legged cavalla mounts that held their heads high and bared teeth at strangers and occasionally snapped at each other. Mounted drill, I suddenly knew, was going to become a different experience.
My billet slip said that I was now in Bringham Hall. I wondered if it was an error. I was certain there was an error when I walked up the steps and found Rory standing just within the door. A newly sewn corporal stripe was on his sleeve. He
gaped to see me and then grinned. “Well, here you are, back again, and healthy as a pig to boot! Look at you, Nevare! Last time I had a glimpse of you, well, I thought it would be my last! And here you are, back from the dead, same as me, but fat and sassy to boot!” Then his grin faded as he asked me, “You’ve had the news, haven’t you? About Nate and Oron and everyone?”
“Yes. I have. It’s going to be strange. Is this truly where we’ve been billeted?”
Rory nodded. “Yup. Colonel Rebin’s a pip for organizing things. He came through the dormitories like a tornado, day before yesterday. He says there’s not enough of us left to keep them all open, and that inefficiency kills in the field. Didn’t he swear when he had a good look at Skeltzin Hall and saw them broken windows and such! He can cuss better than my own da! Said he wouldn’t have kept soldiers in what was obviously meant to be a pigeon house. I guess when he turned it over to Colonel Stiet, Skeltzin Hall was scheduled for demolition! Stiet turned it back into housing. Anyway, here we are, and the colonel mixed us all up good. Old blood, new blood, he don’t care. Says it all runs red when you get hurt, so we might as well learn to make sure none of us gets hurt. Hey. A bit of good news. I saw Jared and Lofert already. They’re back and I put your bunk in the same area as theirs. Gord’s back, too. Hey, you’ll never guess. He’s a married man now. Him and his girl got harnessed when the plague was at its worst. Their folks said if they were all going to die, they might as well have a bit of life first. Only no one in their families even got sick out there. You oughta see him strut now. He looks so happy he almost doesn’t look fat anymore.”
I shook my head in amazement. Then, “How’d you get to be a corporal?” I demanded.
He grinned his big froggy grin. “Field promotion is what Colonel Rebin called it. He says that’s what happens when you’re one of the few left standing after the battle smoke clears. He jumped up a bunch of us. Told us that if we proved ourselves worthy, we could keep the stripes. Bet you wish you’d got yerself back here a day or two early.”