by L D Inman
It wasn’t an infallible virtue. Speir’s strength carried the shadow of its own weakness: as his own did, he supposed: as Barklay’s did. Speir, he wanted to say, don’t let Barklay bewilder you.
And with the thought, it came to him with sudden clarity: that was exactly what had happened to him. It wasn’t confusion that had drawn him and Barklay together; Barklay had done it on purpose, had seen the opportunity in what must have been obvious devotion on Douglas’s part. Douglas had never been able to hide anything; he’d learned not to steal sweets from the kitchen as a child because he could never lie successfully; even his most obdurate silences gave everything away. And Barklay might think he was acting upon compulsion, but did compulsion hedge itself round with so many excusing safeguards?
Douglas had always known these things to be true. It was just that now they wrung his heart as much as they troubled his mind.
It was just that they were now impossible to ignore.
~*~
The nature of a rota captains’ meeting always changed when a new officer joined it. When Speir came into Barklay’s office, she brought with her the scent of cool autumn air from the arena quad, two tablets and a guardbook, and an indefinable sense of incipient velocity. “Good morning, sir—sir,” she said to Barklay and Marag. “Cameron.” Cameron had arrived first; she smiled at Speir with unaffected pleasure.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Barklay said. “There’s tea if you want it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Speir provided herself with tea and chose a place at the table.
The others arrived quickly, and Barklay called the meeting to order. The predawn light tinged the window drapes and began to compete with the conference table lamps: cool light and warm tempering one another. And the atmosphere of the meeting itself was much the same. Roused to wakefulness by Speir’s added ready attention, the rota captains disposed of their reports easily. Speir picked up the protocols quickly, asked useful questions, and Barklay noticed that with her in the room, postures were upright and hopeful. It was always good for one’s morale to show someone else how to go on, and Speir’s courtesy receiving the instruction was a fresh balm.
At the same time, Barklay took quiet note of the thoughtful pinch of Marag’s lips; Douglas’s dark-eyed silence; the glances cast between Cameron and Stevens and Ahrens. Speir did not query Douglas with any glances; Barklay suspected she did not have to wonder what in particular was on Douglas’s mind and had decided to let him deal with it on his own.
The meeting finished and broke up in pleasantries, and the junior officers drifted toward the door, chatting. Marag hadn’t missed the lance of Douglas’s look at Barklay and Barklay’s steady gaze back; he took his leave with gentle irony, and Barklay followed him to the door and shut it as he left.
“Well?” he said, turning to Douglas.
Douglas’s eyes were still hard: he was immovably angry. “So you’re holding private conferences with Speir now?” he said.
The affront took Barklay unawares. “Is that any of your concern?” he said, coolly.
He hadn’t said it to hurt Douglas—had he?—but he saw the tiny flinch in Douglas’s eyes before his glare redoubled. “I think you should guard against trespassing on her generosity,” he said.
He had always wanted Douglas to keep an independent point of view—but his sudden hardness stung bitterly. “If I deserve rebuke,” he said, “I am sure Speir is capable of delivering it. Again I ask, is that—”
“She can,” Douglas said, “but it doesn’t mean she will. And it’s not her job only to guard the march, sir.”
“Douglas, what—where is this coming from? Do you think I would harm Speir on purpose?” A horrible conviction was taking hold: this could only be because of Solham Fray. “Do you think I would harm you?”
“No,” Douglas said, but the hurt was clearly visible in him now. “Not on purpose.”
By negligence, then? But Barklay didn’t want to know the answer to that. “I am not going to harm Speir, Douglas. Why would I want to do that? I like her. I admire her wisdom. I value her counsel.”
That’s what you said to me, Douglas didn’t say. His steady lowered look said it for him.
“No one is supplanting you in my affections, Douglas. If that’s what—”
“I wasn’t actually worried about that, sir,” Douglas said, with biting acerbity.
“What, then?” Barklay stepped closer, hesitating within reach. “I can’t mend it if you don’t tell me what it is.” He could see that Douglas would not be soothed: Douglas still belonged to himself, which Barklay wanted; but he hadn’t wanted to lose Douglas’s trust into the bargain. “What is it, Douglas?” he said, more softly.
Douglas was no more amenable to the touch of his voice than the touch of his hand. He bridled, struggling for a moment, and then blurted: “Why can’t we be proper bedfellows, sir? In the open. The way it ought to be.”
Before he could stop himself, Barklay winced away from the suggestion. Too late: Douglas would know that whatever he said next would be a mask for the true answer: I don’t want to.
“Wouldn’t that harm your standing?” he said, gently.
“My standing!” Douglas snapped upright, and held his voice down to quiet asperity. “You courted scandal the entire time Commander Jarrow was here, and now you’re worried about my standing.”
“But in the case of a scandal,” Barklay pointed out, “I could carry the full blame on my shoulders alone.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that, sir.” Douglas hadn’t stepped away from him, which was a relief. But he wasn’t making room for Barklay either. “And you can announce your intention to pay court to a subordinate any time you like. But you don’t want to do that.”
He didn’t. “Douglas, I don’t want you to be entangled with me,” Barklay pleaded. “I want you to be able to walk away clear.” John hadn’t been able to walk away clear. But maybe Barklay was wrong about where he’d gone wrong…no. He would never be able to do justice to Douglas’s love.
“In other words,” Douglas said quietly, “you don’t love me.”
He should have known Douglas would not remain satisfied with their arrangement as it was. Barklay got out with difficulty: “I don’t want to be a lover to you.”
“Not the same thing, Barklay.” Douglas’s eyes were dark and inexorable. “Do you love me?”
For an eternal instant Barklay couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe. Then: “No.”
Lie. It even sounded like a lie, hanging in the air between them like a fug of cowardice. He watched Douglas absorb the answer together with its obvious falsity. Crimson came into his face and then drained away again. Then he relaxed, and his dignity returned to him, miraculous and superb.
“In that case, sir,” he said gently, “I would rather you didn’t oblige me in the future. I will oblige you if you like; but not the other. Please.”
“Are you sure?” was all Barklay could say for a moment; then added lamely, “I like to see you at your pleasure.”
Douglas visibly chose not to address this. “I am asking, sir.”
“If that’s what you want,” Barklay said, feeling a wash of misery. “But it doesn’t sound very equitable.”
“It never was, sir.” He had never heard Douglas’s voice so gentle. “Water takes the lowest place.”
It was a rebuke so powerful in its simplicity that it seemed to nail Barklay’s soul to the floor. There was a long silence.
Then Douglas bent a glance toward the door. Barklay nodded, dismissing him. Douglas laid his closed hand to his heart—water takes the lowest place—bowed, and went past him to the door. Barklay didn’t move.
He heard Douglas close the door again softly behind him.
8
Winter came to Ryswyck with a bluster. Students dug out their thicker uniforms and wrapped themselves in red scarves under their hoods, as much to spare their ears a boxing from the wind as to keep out the cold rain. The sky closed over and gre
w dark; lamps were lit under their blackout shades in mid-afternoon. The geothermal vents, which usually served the drying-cupboards only, were rattled open to pour their warmth into corridors and classrooms; the native scent of the school took on tinges of moistened dust and drying wool. Captain Wallis urged people to take longer showers under the panel lamps, and to make use of the sun-room in the infirmary if they found themselves falling behind in exposure time.
The storms broke over them in somber waves. It rarely got cold enough for a hard freeze on the south coast, but the rain fell thickly, an ever-present threat of the ice that coated everything in the northern regions. It drummed on the arena dome as if with twice its actual weight, and Speir had to pitch the arena chant to pierce its numbing burr, listening for the responses under the pallid indoor lights.
Nothing was heard from Lord Selkirk or Central Command, and as the days and weeks slipped past, Ryswyck’s latent worry submerged itself again. By Lightfall, Jarrow’s brief stint at Ryswyck had been nearly forgotten, and everyone adjusted once again to the shorthandedness of the teaching staff.
The day of deepest winter found the rota captains working hard to coordinate the feast: after dinner the tables and benches were moved to the end of the mess hall and stacked; the kitchen team hastened to finish the confections for which Ryswyck had saved a month’s sugar ration; Ryswyck’s musicians collected on the dais for a last rehearsal; and there was a flurry of candle-counting as midnight approached.
When the hour came, the lights of the hall were turned out, and all voices dropped to a hush as Ryswyckians took candles from the cadets with baskets at the door and picked their way through the darkness to find places to stand, around the walls and closer in. Speir already had her place, close to the small brazier that had been set up in the center of the room.
She could tell when everyone had arrived, because the shuffling stopped and the whispers died. She waited until the silence was complete, let it soak in for a few more breaths, and then opened the chant, her voice a clear cadenza in the darkness, soft and then growing in strength.
This was the hour, she sang, when darkness seemed to have mastered all. When all that had been home was a country of forgetting. When the air was a burden and the ground an uneasy resting place. An hour when even the balefires were dimmed to ashes, swallowed in the wake of the poisonous inferno.
The bad times had made it so that the only possible worship was to make a virtue of loss: in the long generations since, every people had crept their way out of darkness little by little, but no one ever forgot that the love of wisdom was found in making offering. And there was always something one could give over. To make an offering, even of defeat and loss, was to kindle a light. All darkness apprehends its own ending.
When her chant reached that point of offering, there was the harsh sound of a tinderbox, and in the sudden glow Barklay was lighting the candle Marag held. In turn, Marag kindled the light of the shadowed person near him, and the bright stars multiplied, flame to flame. They had reached the responsory, and voices joined Speir’s as the rite swelled to its conclusion, many candles concentering until they all were lit.
Tradition had shaped it so that the chant would accompany them outside to light the bonfire, processing single file with their little lights. But years of blackout conditions had forced the ceremony indoors, so instead Marag used his candle to light the little brazier. The flames crackled up merrily, just as the chant finished with everyone at full voice. Sudden silence followed, the illuminated faces of the Ryswyckians composed in one last moment of solemnity. Then breaths were drawn as one, and they all cried out in a bloodcurdling yell that made all the little flames shudder and even the immovable timbers reverberate. The yell was broken up by hilarious laughter, someone turned up the lights, and it was time for the Midnight Reel.
No sooner had the brazier been removed to burn out on the covered side porch than the drums struck up the call to dance. Ellis had got out his rebec for the occasion, and his bow cut the air, introducing the measure with his inimitable clarity.
Ryswyckians scrambled to make up lines for the reel, hardly caring who they faced for the first set, hastily tossing their snuffed candles into the baskets before leaping into place. Speir, caught up in the melee, found herself opposite a cadet from Ahrens’s section. They made deep bows to one another, one hand open on the heart and the other swept back in equal salute; and the dance began.
Speir danced with Cameron next; then with Cadet Corda; then with Stevens: each set forming and reforming like a cloud of starlings choosing shape in unison. After a bit she tumbled out and helped herself to some mulled cider and a soft cake glistening with sugar and icing. Taking her refreshments out of the way of traffic, she found herself next to Barklay along the wall.
“Are you not dancing this year, sir?” she asked him, aiming her voice for his ear through the din.
Barklay shook his head with a little smile. His eyes, she saw, were drawn to where Douglas had challenged Ahrens to keep up with him in a wild and complicated sequence of footwork. They were both sweating and trying not to waste precious breath on laughing, and a circle was forming round them, clapping and stamping to keep time. As they watched, they danced harder and faster till Ahrens finally stumbled; Douglas flung up a hand with an ear-splitting whoop and let himself fall backward, where he was caught by three Ryswyckians and restored to his feet.
Speir looked away from Douglas and Ahrens embracing and laughing, to find that a deep sadness had crept into Barklay’s gaze. Presently he blinked and turned to her, hitching up a smile. “Are you not going to dance more, yourself?”
“By and by,” Speir said. “After the break.”
They drifted apart then, and soon after the musicians took their break, crowding at the table to slake their thirst and devour what remained of the sugar cakes. Someone, feeling the loss of the music, started up a winter song, and was joined by several others. When that was finished someone else started one of the more bawdy winter songs, which generated much snickering. A lot of Ilonians were born nine months after Lightfall, and not even the awareness that every man and woman in military service bore a contraceptive implant could dampen the sense of precarious mischief evoked by the lyric.
When the musicians returned to the dais for the last set, there were fewer Ryswyckians there to make up the dance, enough to be noticeable but not enough to diminish the hilarity. The dance wouldn’t finish till nearly first watch, but the dancers would dwindle as more and more would carry one another off for more private revelry, or duck out to catch some sleep before going on duty.
Speir danced a few more dances, then volunteered herself and two of her cadets for cleanup as the feast began to wind down. At last the music ended on a replete and weary chord, and the remaining Ryswyckians stopped what they were doing to applaud and cheer. The musicians took their bows, some still looking fresh and bright-eyed, some much less so. Ellis was one of the latter; he dropped step by step down from the dais with his rebec slung in its bag over his shoulder. “Ach, Ellis,” said Stevens, who was helping Speir wrangle a table down from its stack, “how very obliged to you we are. You deserve a proper rest. Or to get laid, if you have it in you.”
That brought a tired grin to Ellis’s face. “Oh, I’ve made arrangements, never fear. Else I’d ask you if you were offering.”
Stevens was too tired to come up with a suitable retort, so he pulled a face instead.
Besides Speir and Stevens, very few remained to set the room to rights; Barklay had gone, along with most of the senior and junior cadre. Cameron, Ahrens, and Douglas were gone too. Speir did not try to parse the meaning of their absences. She said goodnight to Stevens and went yawning to her own quarters, where she turned in and slept hard.
~*~
She didn’t catch up with Douglas till the following afternoon, when she found him coming out of the junior officers’ com kiosk, looking tired but calm. “Talking to your family?” she asked him.
“Ay
e,” Douglas said. “Got a call through to my mother, to speak of miracles.”
“And how does she fare?” Speir asked.
“Well as usual.” Douglas flicked her an interrogative glance, which she knew was meant to gauge whether to ask her if she’d put a call through to the Med House to look in on her father. She hadn’t; Douglas saw her pursed lips and decided to speak more of his mother instead. “She got the news that the capital’s cut subsidies again. Her neighbors are sorely wrought up, she says; there’s going to be a winter council to pool resources and possibly send someone down to argue for Arisail. But my mother thinks it’d be a fool’s errand to send someone on a rough winter journey only to find out that they’ve cut subsidies everywhere. She said it doesn’t take a sage to figure that the Berenians have tightened their blockade to keep us from bringing in supplies. I couldn’t give her confirmation of that, but there’s no denying she’s right.”
Speir nodded ruefully.
“She said I should expect a parcel in the next post or so. Oh, and she sent her greetings to you, too.”
“Tell her I thank her,” Speir said with a smile.
“Then—” Douglas flushed a little— “she asked if I had a notion of starting a family.”
“With me, you mean?” Speir was amused. “Well, there’s no doubt you’re a promising specimen, Douglas—” he gave her a shove, and they both snickered— “but we’re not like to make fast and nest together. What did you tell her?”
“That,” he said, gesturing at her. “More or less.”
“And she accepted it?”
“Oh aye,” Douglas said. “She’s not one for sentiment, my mother.” He heaved a little sigh after this; Speir wondered if he edited what he disclosed to his mother for more than military security. Then realized the question was whether he actually fooled her.
Their ways lay separately when they reached the cloister. With his hand on the door to the arena quad, Douglas asked: “You coming to sparring court?”