by L D Inman
“You were quiet all day yesterday,” Cameron said, “and you’ve been quiet all day today. Even more than usual. I think you know something.”
Douglas just looked at her. “But you’re not telling,” she guessed.
“There’s nothing I could tell that would make it make sense,” Douglas said with a sigh.
“But what do you think it means?” said Ahrens impatiently. “Is Selkirk about to move against Ryswyck?”
“I don’t know that either,” Douglas said. “I suspect Lord Selkirk didn’t get the results he wanted by sending Jarrow here, but I can’t even be sure of that.”
Just as Douglas had not let Barklay in on his thoughts, Barklay hadn’t told Douglas anything of what had happened after he and Speir left Barklay’s office the day before. He hadn’t told Speir, either; Douglas had given her what little news he had when he saw her at dinner, and she had only nodded thoughtfully, still possessed by that strange calm. It would be one thing if she were quietly traumatized; but that wasn’t what Douglas sensed in her. It was more something like reassurance, if not outright relief. Which made a sort of sense, but Douglas couldn’t bring himself to ask her to confirm or debunk his perceptions. Whatever response her soul had made to those terrible revelations, it was removed enough from his that he felt doubly bereft.
Cameron was looking at him steadily, as if she could tell that it was Douglas who was quietly traumatized. What would she do—what would Ahrens do—if they came to know that it wasn’t about defending Ryswyck from people who chose to misunderstand; that Ryswyck’s whole context was darker and more complicated than any of its students guessed?
“I was just telling Ahrens,” she said, “that if all were well I would have expected Barklay to be glad to see the back of Jarrow. But he doesn’t look glad. He looks…well, I don’t know. But it makes me uneasy.”
“He was still hoping to win Jarrow over, may be,” Ahrens said.
“That was never going to happen,” Cameron scoffed.
Ahrens shrugged. “If courtesy were easy, we wouldn’t need a Ryswyck.”
Cameron was silent a moment, her brows down in thought.
“What do you think, Douglas?” Ahrens asked.
There was a miserable ache under Douglas’s breastbone. He heard himself say: “I think Barklay always knew it was going to be a heavy lift. Excuse me.” He touched closed hand to heart and went on to the far door, feeling their eyes on his back the whole way.
He had an hour free—a little less now that he’d loitered after the meeting. If he spent it in his quarters someone would inevitably come looking for him to ask more questions. He could go to the farm—the long walk appealed to him—but Stevens would likely find him there. Same with the tower. He needed to think.
After a moment’s labored decision, he went out into the arena quad and headed for the chapel. If Speir was there, he could be near her without speaking; and in any case it would buy him a moment’s respite.
There was no one in the chapel. Douglas took off his shoes in the vestibule and crept into the little hall. A few lights, not many, flickered in the niches of the rock frieze; hesitantly, Douglas went up and lit one for himself, with an obscure feeling that he ought to propitiate wisdom for borrowing sacred space to hide out in. He retreated to the back of the room, out of sightline from the vestibule, and sat on the floor with his knees tucked up.
His memory caught on threads of images, taking him back and back, and even knowing it was futile, he tried to inhabit them again, to feel again his breath and blood rising in joy.
With his university certificate and his high scores in army basic training, Douglas could have gone straight to the capital and trained to be an officer there; but he had chosen instead to take the arduous entrance examination for Ryswyck Academy. Ryswyckian officers were said to be the elite, and Douglas, who had loaded himself with knowledge and had nowhere to apply it, wanted that intense velocity of skill. He had been attracted, too, by the idea of direct combat in the old tradition as a means of honing one’s mental and moral edge.
But he had not been prepared for the sheer astonishment of his encounter with Ryswyck’s living rule of courtesy. In his first weeks as a cadet, his soul turned over and opened wide, a process of moments like the fanned leaves of a book, and yet all one in experience: like falling in love, though his feet stayed firm on the ground; like drinking from a cup of light, though the light was everywhere.
And Barklay had been at the center of it: the warm, insouciant dynamism that made the school thrum with energy, the gracious cupbearer who met each of his students soul to soul. Douglas had admired, even adulated, his chief commander; but in this he was no different from many of his peers, and he had regarded his own feelings about Barklay as part of the landscape, a commonplace pleasure. Until one day, a little less than a year ago and shortly after his promotion to the junior cadre, when his awareness took on new and sudden dimension.
He could not now remember exactly what the occasion had been. He had just come off a bout in the arena, he remembered, because Barklay had complimented him on the grace with which he had taken his loss. He remembered they had been in a classroom corridor, that Douglas had told Barklay something about his week’s duties, and that he had said something about parsing his match in sparring court that shook Barklay into laughter. And then, taking his leave, Barklay had given him a full bow, a jest and a kindness, and for an instant Douglas’s gaze had tangled with Barklay’s direct blue eyes.
Oh.
Barklay had continued down the corridor, seemingly unwitting of the cataclysm unfolding throughout Douglas’s senses. A subverbal thought took hold in him and lasted even after the shock had rippled away and gone: So this is who I am to love.
The thought had never left him since.
Douglas had quickly risen in the leadership of the junior officers, and not long after he had been named as captain of A Rota, Barklay began to ask his advice, to consult with him privately about this situation or that. He liked to hear Douglas’s assessments and treated them as valuable gifts of wisdom, and Douglas did not mind closing the office door to speak to Barklay alone. He knew that Barklay was said to have developed casual understandings with junior officers from time to time, but he never gave preferential treatment to anyone, and so his dealings with Barklay did not seem strange to him. Even the day when, standing next to Barklay at his desk, he had found himself looking down into Barklay’s face naked with longing, his pulse had quickened but he had not been terribly shocked.
Barklay had touched Douglas then; stroked his flanks and then unbuttoned him, and unstrung Douglas where he stood braced against the desk, with gentle hands and a thorough tongue. But he had put away Douglas’s own hands when he tried to caress him in return; and Douglas had gone away from Barklay’s office with shaking knees, his head and heart in a whirl of confusion.
As time went on, he, and Ryswyck with him, grew used to this state of affairs and accepted it; it did not trouble them; only Douglas, in the secrecy of his heart, had been troubled. As far as he could tell Barklay had not broken courtesy to him; he had not made any benefits contingent on Douglas’s sexual willingness; he had attuned himself to Douglas’s moods and needs and did not ask too much of him at the wrong moment; he had not singled Douglas out for notice among his peers; he had not violated the general military code; he had done nothing in cruelty; he had not failed, by word or deed, to obtain Douglas’s consent to command the entire initiative between them. It was a trespass, and it made Douglas unhappy, but it was not an offense. Barklay was not capable of offense.
Not capable of offense: yet Barklay had stripped men naked and tied them in positions designed for unbearable discomfort; he had laughed as they were insulted and smeared with filth and subjected to prying pains and kept from sleep for days and terrorized with the threat of imminent death; he had bent his gift of contagious zest to sway young soldiers to obey their darkest instincts; he had taken pleasure in dehumanizing his enemies; he had
knowingly, gloatingly cast souls to the ground and trampled on them; he had done these things for two years before that chance encounter called him back from the brink.
Alone in the chapel, Douglas found he could not weep. His soul was bruised in a place that would not draw tears. He could only hug his knees and cry out silently: Oh, Barklay.
Be careful of the maps you use, Jarrow had said.
It was Barklay who had done these horrifying things. But it was Jarrow who had leveraged them to break Douglas’s heart if he could. Whatever Selkirk might choose to do to Jarrow for this security breach, Douglas felt little sympathy. The only thing Douglas feared was that Selkirk might widen his inquiry to harm Speir, but he couldn’t speak of that fear to her; she would only be annoyed at Douglas for worrying over her. Speir didn’t believe in being careful of herself; she had never lost her balance, and such a worry was opaque to her. Yet if anything could disturb her balance, this ought to; and she was still steady. Douglas called off his thoughts about that before he could upset himself further. His time was almost up.
Would Barklay have learned to be more careful, after this? Probably not, Douglas thought. One thing had been made clear by Jarrow’s revelations: far from seeing his behavior to Douglas as reckless, Barklay thought he was exercising restraint. But Douglas couldn’t, for the life of him, think of a way to bring that home to Barklay, not without provoking an even worse scandal. And his own impulse was to start planning for his exit from Ryswyck, into the soonest suitable commission. Even as he thought it, he was rising to his feet as if to start preparing to leave that very moment. But in his absence, Barklay would only turn to someone else to commit the same trespass. Eventually. There was nothing Douglas could see to do about that, either. Douglas donned his shoes and re-emerged into the light of the arena quad, familiar and yet depressingly different.
He would just have to set a guard and keep watch.
~*~
At breakfast the next morning, Speir received the buffets of congratulations from her peers with a hesitating smile. Barklay and Marag had explained to her the previous evening that she was to head up B Rota in Ellis’s absence, and her pleasure at undertaking the responsibility was alloyed by awareness of the reason for her promotion. Ellis would not have vacated his place if Jarrow had not gone. Speir sighed to herself.
She had seen Jarrow at a distance, heading to the shuttle on the airfield in the escort of an adjutant from Central, and had recognized the beleaguered set of his shoulders. He had caught sight of her, and his steps faltered briefly; he shot her a look of troubled resentment, but they were not near enough for speech, and his escort had prodded him on. Speir knew she should not pity him, but she did, even though she could not fathom his self-destructive malice.
She was almost glad when she found a post-message to go and see Barklay after she had taken over Ellis’s schedule and settled her rota in their duties. She went to Barklay’s office and knocked on his doorframe.
“Ah, Lieutenant Speir. Come in. And shut the door, would you please? Come round here. I wanted to speak with you.”
Speir obeyed readily and came to stand at Barklay’s side where he sat at his desk. He looked up at her silently for a moment.
“How do you fare?” he asked her quietly.
“Well enough, sir,” Speir said. “It’s…better to know things than not to know them. If you know what I mean.”
“Yes. All the same, I am sorry.”
“Yes, sir. Sir…?”
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Do you—do you know why Commander Jarrow did what he did? Hasn’t he hurt himself more than he hurt you?”
Barklay sighed. His fingertips beat a small paradiddle on his desk. Then he said: “I suspect he wasn’t thinking quite as clearly as he thought he was. His cousin, it turns out, was the man who was punished for the incident at Solham Fray. Jarrow couldn’t find a good way to avenge him, so he chose a bad one instead, as I read it.”
“Oh.” Speir thought a moment. “Did Lord Commander Selkirk know they were related?”
Barklay’s mobile expression twitched sourly. “Evidently Selkirk thought he could make use of that without it backfiring.”
“So Lord Selkirk didn’t plan it with him.”
“No.”
“What’s going to happen to Jarrow, then?” Speir asked.
Barklay sighed again, a long breath. “I don’t know. I imagine Selkirk will try to discipline him as quietly as possible.”
Speir nodded. She found she was not afraid to look at Barklay anymore. In fact, looking him in the face now, she could read him better than she had before: that air of chastened recalcitrance, that grave smile like the sunset of a raging grief, the winsome hope of his eyes meeting hers. Speir’s compassion, dammed up and displaced from her long failure, won forth and began to carve a deep channel within her. She knew that Barklay had not set any guard on his own need: she would have to set it for him. It was going to be difficult.
He said: “I did have something else to speak to you about. As you know, Lieutenant Ellis had served as Ryswyck’s cantor while he was head of B Rota. Now that role is open as well. I was wondering if you would be willing to take it on.”
“I don’t know, sir,” Speir said, taken aback. “I had never thought of myself as having much of a voice.”
“You mean, you’ve never stood forth before now,” Barklay said shrewdly.
It was true.
“Are you afraid of the visibility?” he asked her.
Speir thought about it. “No, sir,” she said finally. “Should I be?”
“On the contrary.” There it was again, that little coup-smile of his: conspiratorial, even flirtatious. “Everyone else should be.”
Speir was amused. “That’s never been one of my ambitions, sir.”
“All the same, it would become you.”
Where was this coming from? Looking down at him, Speir began to realize what he was after. “Would it be of help to you to foster me, sir?” The words were unvarnished but she made her voice gentle.
He blinked, momentarily abashed. Then he gave her truth for truth. “It helps more that you see me clearly,” he said.
“I’m glad to oblige you, sir,” she said. “And I will serve as cantor if you like.”
Barklay relaxed and sat back in his chair. “Excellent. Then, unless you had something else for me, you may be dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Speir said.
“The obligation is mine,” said Barklay.
~*~
After supper, Douglas tapped at Speir’s door. “Yes?” he heard her say.
“It’s me.”
“Come in.”
He opened the door and peered inside. “Does your new schedule still admit our study hour?” he asked her.
“It does now,” Speir said. “I made an adjustment.”
They smiled at one another and Douglas came in to arrange himself and his materials on her bench. “A Rota is going to miss you,” he said. “By the way, I’m to tell you there’s going to be a rota captains’ meeting in Barklay’s office tomorrow morning before breakfast. I had a note from Barklay in my post-box—the time’s changed and he said he’d forgotten to tell you.”
“I suppose it slipped his mind during our conference,” Speir said, turning a page in her book and picking up her stylus.
“You were in conference with him this morning?” Douglas had passed by Barklay’s office and seen the door shut.
She must have heard something in his voice, because she looked up. “Yes. He wanted to ask me if I would take over Ellis’s role as cantor.” He didn’t move, but he must have signaled his skepticism, because she added: “And, incidentally, to probe into how I was faring.”
Of course he had. Douglas sighed. Then asked her reluctantly: “How are you faring?”
“I was going to ask you that,” Speir said, calmly.
He made a moue at her. “I asked first.”
His face at her provoked
her to a smile. “I’m well enough. It’s not good; but I’d rather know than not.”
“I suppose,” Douglas said.
“And you?”
He looked away. “I’ll be all right.”
“Can I do anything for you?” she asked softly.
Ach, Speir. That’s always the first thing you ask, isn’t it? “No need of that,” he said firmly, looking back at her. “But thank you.”
“All right,” she said. She always took him at his word, without offense. Even if, as he suspected, she did not believe his protestations. Oh, my dear friend. For the briefest of moments he entertained an image of throwing himself upon her compassion and weeping into her lap. Which would not do any good, and would be poor service to her besides. And if he didn’t show restraint, Barklay certainly wouldn’t.
They settled down to their work, Douglas relaxed on her bench, Speir in her desk chair with her sock feet propped against her bunk. But even as he worked, Douglas’s troubled thoughts continued their course in parallel. Speir was, of course, the natural choice for Barklay to turn to for solace. Barklay would try to resist trespassing upon her generosity, but in the end he would do it anyway. And she already bore great burdens upon her shoulders.
Douglas studied her covertly from under his brows. She had changed into training knits and her robe; the tail of its tie, half caught under her seat, dangled over the side of the chair cushion. Her hair was drying from the shower, fanning in dark-damp threads from where she’d pinned it loosely on top of her head. The summer-bleached ends were already dry, shining gold and white in the lamplight from her desk. She kept her hair long just to keep those touches of sun twisted among the warmer dark strands. It was Speir’s only vanity, and he held it in affection: it wasn’t that she consciously denied herself such personal pleasures, but her courtesy always shone outward in a radiant action, and she served herself only incidentally, when it occurred to her.