“A mistake,” said Shade, eyes still locked with the commander’s.
“We’ll see about that. The rest of you, get out.”
The cadets left, glad to have escaped the crossfire. Jame hesitated.
“Go,” said Shade. “It’s over for today.”
“What was that all about?” asked Tarn as they gained the arcade boardwalk.
“House business,” said Jame. “Just be glad it isn’t yours.”
Trinity, what a mess the Randir are, she thought, and the Ardeth too. Ha. Let’s not forget the Knorth. How many other houses are secretly coming apart at the seams?
At the square, they parted, each to his or her own quarters, Mouse with Mick and Mack again settled in her hair.
“That just leaves you,” said Jame to Twizzle.
The pook wriggled what was presumably his hind end and jumped up into her arms.
“All right,” she told him as he licked her face. “At least until your master returns.”
CHAPTER VIII
New Year’s Eve
Between Winter 120 and Spring 1
I
“There you are!”
Jame found herself in the grip of Rue. “Come on. D’you want to be scalped?”
They made a dash back to the Knorth barracks. Brier Iron-thorn met them inside the front door. Her bruises were settling into two black eyes and a swollen lip. How the rest of her looked, Jame could only guess.
“Did you get into the Caineron barracks?”
“No. But I still have this.” The Southron indicated Higbert’s scarf bound around her upper arm.
“What will you do when you catch him?”
Brier smiled, revealing missing teeth. “Something appropriate.”
Rue tugged at Jame, fussing. “Come upstairs and change. You’re dripping with muck.”
“Shouldn’t I be helping in the kitchen?”
Brier waved her off, disgusted. “Go. We don’t need green slime to garnish the soup.”
Jame found Timmon still in her quarters.
“I saw Narsa,” she said, kicking his booted feet off of her bed. “She’s very upset.”
“She’ll get over it,” he replied, unconcerned.
Should she tell the rest of it? No. That was Narsa’s secret. However, his indifference grated on her.
“You’re going back to your quarters,” she told him. “Everyone should be at lunch by now. Take my ten-command if you’re still shy about facing your own.”
He went, reluctantly, and returned when she had just finished changing into dry clothes.
“Now what’s the matter?” Then, with a change of tone, “Timmon, sit down. You look terrible. Here, drink this.”
The Ardeth downed a cup of water with shaking hands, nearly choking on it. A dash of freckles stood out on his white face like flecks of dried blood. “She was there. Narsa. Hanging over my bed. Still warm.”
Jame sank to her heels beside him, feeling as if someone had just punched her in the stomach. Suicide without even the dignity of the White Knife, solitary, desperate, and unexplained, except to the one whom Narsa had felt to be her mortal rival. To whom did her secret belong now?
“. . . and her leg,” Timmon was saying. “Dangling there, all black and swollen. What could have happened to it?”
“Addy! She was underfoot. If Narsa trod on her . . .”
“You mean the Randir’s snake could be to blame for Narsa’s suicide?”
Jame was taken aback by his sudden eagerness. “It must have been hideously painful,” she said cautiously, “perhaps even fatal without a healer’s immediate care.”
“That makes sense. Sort of. Narsa didn’t like healers. Besides, we have none currently in residence. If the pain became unbearable . . . I mean, dammit, she wouldn’t kill herself just because I didn’t meet with her as we had planned, would she? Well, would she?”
“I don’t know. But she’s still dead.”
“I realize that. What I mean is you don’t think I’m to blame . . . do you?”
“Timmon, it was your bed she hanged herself over. That means something.”
He was up now and pacing. “Why should it, except that she was angry at me? What cause she had for that, though, I don’t know. We both had fun while it lasted.”
“You’re trying to slide out of responsibility again.”
“For what, and if so, why not? My father took his pleasure where he pleased, and he was a great man.”
“Sweet Trinity,” said Jame, exasperated. “According to whom?”
Oh, where was that flash of steel that she had seen at Gothregor when Timmon had spoken up for his house and driven Fash back? Even now, she sensed that he was arguing with himself more than with her. Pereden would easily have shaken off Narsa’s death, without bothering to find reasons for it. His son was having a harder time of it.
As if reminded by his reference to his father, Timmon had drawn out the packet that the Highlord had given him and was holding it gingerly.
“How do you suppose your brother got this?”
Now it was Jame’s turn to feel uneasy. Somehow, she was sure that it hadn’t been Torisen who had taken ring and finger from the pyre. She also still didn’t know why her brother had killed Pereden in the first place, only that all Perimal would break out if anyone else learned that he had.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said, feeling herself turn cagey in turn. “Does it matter?”
“It might. Perhaps they came from the Southern Wastes, although why one of the Highlord’s people found them when Grandfather couldn’t is beyond me. That must be it, though. After all, everybody knows it was a changer at the Cataracts impersonating my father who led the Waster Horde.”
He said this last with a note of defiance, but also unease. However much he might reassure himself, not everyone who had been there believed the changer story.
“One of these days,” said Jame, “you’re going to have to step out of your father’s shadow. My advice is that you burn that finger, wear the ring, and be the man that Pereden should have been.”
Timmon hesitated, uncertain, then slipped the relics back into his pocket.
“It’s too soon,” he said obliquely.
Jame sighed. He was so nearly worth saving. When it came down to it, though, she didn’t entirely trust her own feelings. Perhaps, as when Lord Ardeth had used his Whinno-hir Brithany to test a young Torisen, it was time for a second opinion.
“Well, then, what now?” she said. “I have things to do. You can continue to skulk here, go back to your household chores, or come with me, but only if you swear on your honor never to tell anyone anything about what you may see or hear.”
This clearly intrigued him.
“Keeping secrets, are we? All right. I’ll swear and I’ll come.”
II
Again, Jame visited her uncle’s quarters first to check on Jorin. When he heard her enter, the ounce yawned, jumped down from the chest, and stretched to seemingly impossible lengths.
“I thought even you would have slept enough by now,” she told him, and opened the box.
The chrysalis lay cocooned in ruined finery like an egg in a gaudy nest. The shell had become entirely translucent. Within it, something stirred in an azure glow etched with shifting lines of gold.
“Any day now,” said Jame, tracing a fine crack with her fingertip. “Then we’ll see.”
She, Timmon, Jorin, and the pook slipped out the front door of the barracks. Under cover of a rowdy game of blind-tag played between sargents and randon in the square, raucously coached by cadets, they gained the northern gate unnoticed and left Tentir.
Above the college was a random collection of boulders that had rolled down from the mountains above, some as small as a bald man buried up to the eyebrows, others twice a man’s height. Death’s-head charged around one of the latter, skidded to a halt, and brandished his scythelike twin horns in Jame’s face.
“If I were the horse-master,” she said,
holding very still, “that would be my cue to bash him in the snout with this tool bag.”
Timmon had scrambled backward halfway up a boulder. There he lost his grip and fell at the rathorn’s feet. Death’s-head pawed around him, then retreated with a snort.
“Given that you haven’t been trampled to death,” said Jame, “I think that means that he’s accepted you.”
Harmless, was the word that had formed in her mind. Mostly. What kind of a judgment was that?
Timmon scrabbled to his feet, staring. “What . . . how . . . t-this is the colt who ambushed us at the swimming hole, isn’t it? The one that Gorbel hunted? Do you ride him?”
Jame made a face. “After a fashion.”
“D’you think he would let me?”
The rathorn, advancing, knocked him over.
“I don’t think so.”
The colt wheeled on his hocks and disappeared around a boulder with a taunting flick of his silken tail. Timmon followed him with Jame hard on his heels, hoping that she hadn’t set him up for the slaughter. What followed amounted to a game of hide and seek. Timmon grabbed a creamy tail. Bel-tairi squealed and bolted. Back came the rathorn, roaring to her rescue, and Timmon scrambled up another rock, only to descend again when the colt and the Whinno-hir had calmed down and fallen to grazing.
“I didn’t know that rathorns ate grass,” he said, trying hard to breathe normally.
“So will a dog or a cat, if it suits them. He’s omnivorous, as far as I can make out, although rocks disagree with him. Here.” She handed Timmon a curry brush from a sack that she had brought from her room. “You take Bel.”
She watched as he approached the mare, noting how he moved so as not to startle her. Either he knew about her blind side, or instinctively avoided it. Then too, she always grazed with it toward the rathorn. Her single dark eye rolled warily at his touch, but she soon quieted under it. That was good: mild as she was, few people could handle her after the torture that Greshan had inflicted on her. Fair enough for a second (or third?) opinion.
Both equines still had their winter coats, but were beginning to shed heavily. Jame dragged the bristles down the rathorn’s shaggy neck, scraping a swatch clean. He leaned into the brush with a groan of pleasure and presented her with his neck to scratch, especially up under the ivory armor where a growth spurt had left tender, new, itchy skin.
“How in Perimal’s name did you tame him?” asked Timmon, watching over the mare’s back, fascinated.
“I didn’t. I blood-bound him.”
“Oh. What about the Whinno-hir?”
“Bel was entrusted to me. She goes her own way.”
“And Gorbel doesn’t try to hunt him anymore? This close to the college, you’d think he would be easy game.”
“Gorbel owes Death’s-head his life after the cave bear incident. He steers hunters away from this area. I’m counting on you to do the same, and to keep the secret.”
“Of course. I swore that I would, didn’t I? I’m not as feckless as you seem to think.”
“Do I?” Jame murmured, putting her weight into her task.
“Well, maybe I was. Once. You would have hated me as a child. I hate the thought of me then. Did you know that, in addition to being my half-brother, Drie used to be my whipping boy? Whenever I did anything wrong, he was punished for it. Father used to watch and laugh, but it annoyed him too, because Drie just seemed to drift away from the pain. He was poor sport, Father said, but it made me uncomfortable enough so that I would behave, at least for a while.”
He bent to his task, grooming Bel’s dappled flank, not meeting Jame’s eyes.
“What we didn’t know was that Drie had formed a bond with a huge, old carp in Omiroth’s pond. Whenever he was beaten on my behalf, that’s where he sent his mind, into the deep, murky water, out of touch, beyond pain. I don’t know how Father found out. The next time I misbehaved, though, he made Drie catch that fish and eat it, raw. Drie wasn’t the same after that. He wouldn’t swim, although he had loved to before, and he would cry when whipped. Father was delighted. I was . . . ashamed.”
“So you brought him with you to Tentir, to get him away.”
“Yes. And he’s been much better here, more like the happy, half-awake boy I used to know, at least since last summer.”
When Fash and Higbert threw him into the Silver, Jame thought. Presumably he had met a new companion in the swift waters, carp or trout or catfish. However, the story left a harsh taste in her thoughts, as if someone had asked her to kill and eat Jorin. Or Bel.
Timmon was watching her askance. “I’ve shocked you,” he said. “As uncomfortable as it made me, I don’t think I ever realized the horror of it until I met you and the Falconeers. Now, the whole thing seems abominable. And Father laughed. Would a truly great man do that? I don’t know. I’m confused. Tentir has made me question most of what I used to believe. So you tell me: am I responsible for Narsa’s death?”
Jame bit her lip. Did her loyalty lie with the dead or with the living? To ask the question was to answer it.
“Narsa was carrying your child.”
Timmon’s face bleached behind its freckles. “Oh,” he said. “Then I am responsible. I had better go and tend to the body.”
He turned and wobbled off, leaving Jame with her mouth open. Sweet Trinity, had he simply left Narsa hanging? But he was gone before she could ask.
III
Currying the two equines took much of the afternoon, until Jame’s arms ached with the continual downstrokes. Hair fell like snow, then like dust, until clean, spring coats shimmered under the brush. The effort and its result did her good, creating two less murky things in the world on the eve of a new year. The sun had set behind the Snowthorns when she finished. It was late afternoon, almost time for the feast.
Calling Jorin and the pook to heel, she went down to the college.
Trestle tables had been set out in the square and cadets sat at them according to house. The time for snatching scarves had apparently passed, although Brier still wore Higbert’s tied around her arm and kept grim watch for him.
Timmon sat at his own table, with empty seats to either side. It would be some time before he made peace with his house or with himself. From the rigid set of his shoulders, Jame could tell that he understood and accepted that.
The randon provided the feast from anything left over from the winter, it being too early for the spring crop. Left to themselves, most houses would have been reduced to root vegetables, dried beans, and salted meat, but this was the eve of the new year and all leftover supplies had been consolidated. Jame saw delicacies and smelt spices alien to her house for months. Galantine pie with dried berries, almond fish stew, swan neck pudding, spiced wine and cider . . . Her mouth began to water.
As cadets settled to the feast, speculation ran rampant among them: who would be scarved the Commandant of Misrule? Perhaps so-and-so because she was funny; perhaps what’s-his-name for the hideous expressions he could make; perhaps someone else because everyone liked him.
A stir arose at the door to Old Tentir. Out of it came Fash and Higbert, carrying chains. The links attached to a collar and the collar, under a dirty white scarf, was worn by Bear.
He stopped on the threshold, swaying, blinking bloodshot eyes.
Since he had emerged during the ambush in the stable, everyone had known at least by rumor that Bear was the legendary monster in the maze, rumored to eat cadets for lunch and supper, if not for breakfast. Even his past had come to light, with randon at last feeling free to describe his feats in happier days. Few, however, had seen him. His huge, shambling form and the obscene cleft in his skull awed them, while the wildness of his looks made many draw away. So did his rank smell, overlaid by the sharp tang of applejack.
They must have gotten him royally drunk to get that collar on him, Jame thought. No wonder he had slept through her clash with Narsa outside his door.
Fash and Higbert led him, stumbling, to the head table and induced hi
m to sit.
Jame found that she had risen to her feet, as had every other cadet. They sat when he did, but on the edge of their benches, poised for Trinity knew what.
In the awkward silence that followed, Fash presented Bear first with a cup of ale, which he swigged down in a gulp, then with a roast haunch of venison. The big man looked at it suspiciously and licked his lips. A nervous laugh rippled through the Caineron as he suddenly snatched it up and tore at it like a wild beast.
This is wrong, Jame thought. Wrong.
Fash snatched the haunch away and held it up, making Bear paw for it. Then he thrust it under the table. Bear went after it. The table heaved. Despite themselves, more cadets started to giggle nervously. Others called at Fash to stop.
The table suddenly overturned as Bear rose. He gripped a chain and jerked Higbert within his terrible grasp.
Brier stood up, holding the cadet’s scarf.
“I order you. Don’t resist.”
Higbert, terrified, went limp. Bear plucked at his limbs, making him dance like a puppet. Rue started to clap in time, followed by others, but Bear’s movements were becoming more and more violent. He had torn a cadet apart before for teasing him.
A black coat swished past and there was Commandant Sheth Sharp-tongue by the high table. From his brother’s grip, he carefully detached Higbert. Bear’s mock scarf, slipping, revealed that the strap around his neck had spikes on it, turned inward. It was a punishment collar for unruly direhounds. Fash jerked on it, and Bear lashed out in pain at the nearest person—his brother. The Commandant fell.
“Get spears!” someone shouted, and weapons appeared in Caineron hands so quickly that they must have been hidden under the table.
This was all planned, thought Jame. She struggled to reach her Senethari’s side, using her claws when cadets didn’t move fast enough. Bear was ringed with steel, striking at any point that came too near. The Commandant lay at his feet.
“Kill him!” Fash was shouting. “Kill him!”
“What in Perimal’s name is going on here?”
Honor's Paradox-ARC Page 12