A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  Shevraeth said, “I’ll ride.”

  They turned away, shoulders tense, elbows out. In fact everyone in Ponytail House looked tense, or excited, or subdued, though they were trying to hide it. But because they rarely attempted to hide their reactions, there was no smoothness of countenance, no reserve of manner, only the awkwardness of half-suppressed emotion.

  Shevraeth had withdrawn behind his court mask the day before, determined that none of them would see how thoroughly revolted he was with the very concept of ritual punishment. He could just barely see the reason behind the immediate canings—action and consequence—but not this cold appointment days after the event, everything carried out with deliberation. Even worse, carried out by those who were supposed to see to one’s safety and well-being. He’d spent the day veering between enraged disgust and a conviction that surely the authorities would relent, perhaps with a suitable warning, but would in the end give way to civilized behavior. Because if you want civilized behavior, you model it. Surely, surely, but his mind would argue with him, Is King Galdran civilized when he smiles, hosts parties for those he hates, and secretly makes their heirs disappear?

  Meanwhile the day passed, it ended, night came, he finally slept, and the sun in its remorseless cycle brought them to this day.

  I need the freedom to put forward my investigations, on behalf of the kingdom, his father had said before sending him to this academy. Freedom means I need you well out of the reach of Galdran’s arm. Marloven Hess is well beyond his arm.

  His father wanted him here, out of all the places in the world presumably beyond King Galdran’s reach. He had to see it out, the bad as well as the good.

  Janold emerged from his alcove dressed in his best tunic, scrupulously smooth and neat. The white line of a clean shirt collar was visible above the high tunic collar, and another white line of clean cuff at his wrists. His gold-topped cane was thrust through his belt at the exact angle he’d wear a knife when he was promoted out of the academy, his hair brushed straight back. He frowned, not speaking, but the others shut up as if he’d shouted a command.

  “Get those boots polished,” he said, glaring at the expectant faces. “And the sashes smooth. You will do Ret Forthan the honor of appearing your best.”

  No one spoke. Boots half-heartedly polished got a vigorous going over. Tunics that were short at the wrists, tight across the shoulders, got yanked and tugged into place, each boy checking the other’s backs so no wrinkles appeared above the sashes. Trousers neat.

  Someone brought out a hair brush—for the very first time. Usually the boys fingered their hair more or less orderly after baths or a dash through the cleaning frame, and that was it for personal grooming.

  The brush got passed from hand to hand, each brushing his hair straight back off his forehead. Shevraeth gave his hair a couple of fast swipes and tossed the brush to Stad, whose dark curls would never lie flat, but he did his best, his forehead noticeably paler at his hairline than above his straight black brows.

  “All right. Out,” Janold said, and waited as they filed past.

  As Shevraeth’s bunk lay against the wall farthest from the door, he was usually last in line in front of or behind Faldred, who had the bed next to Evrec opposite Shevraeth. Faldred tended to be slow.

  Janold motioned Faldred past, fell in step beside Shevraeth, and then hesitated. Faldred was new, but he was a Marloven. Someone had obviously taken him aside, for he’d fit in with such speed it was like they’d always known him. The foreigner was the only one who showed no reaction at all to what they were about to witness. It probably meant he didn’t know what to expect. “Want a word of advice?”

  He’d meant to keep his voice low but they were all listening, or at least the ones in earshot; Vandaus, Stad, big, quiet Tulan, and Mondar all turned, their expressions strained.

  So Janold looked at the foreigner but spoke loud enough for them all to hear. “We had a lot of half-centuries, even one century, the last two or three years before we got rid of the Regent. Everyone survived just fine.”

  No one said anything, but now they were all listening.

  “Remember two things. One, Forthan will survive it, like the others. Though it might not seem that way toward the end. And two, his pain isn’t yours, so don’t try to take it. It won’t help him, and you’ll wake up feeling pretty stupid if you faint.”

  “Faint!” Gannan muttered scornfully, and two or three boys in the front whispered. Everyone was listening by now.

  Janold ignored them all, including Ventdor’s greenish face, the strained lower lip indicative of nausea being fought against.

  Shevraeth did not speak during breakfast, which was a hasty meal confined to bread and cheese. He couldn’t force anything else down, and felt only marginal comfort in seeing that others, like Stad and Ventdor and even phlegmatic Baudan, ate very little as well.

  Then they marched out to the parade ground, where the masters lined the walls—Commander Keriam at the exact center of the back—dressed not in their everyday gray but in their black and tan uniforms, with the marks of the rank they held before they were invited to the academy to train.

  The boys lined up not in lines front to back like usual, but side to side, second and third-year seniors all across the front. Behind them the rest filed in by year with the smallest boys at the back. Dressed formidably at his best, Zheirban stood facing them, his face blanched except for splotches of color over his cheekbones, his pale eyes savage with anger.

  Most of the boys stared ahead, some shocked, others resigned. Shevraeth braced himself, thinking, why am I here? He hadn’t seen anything yet, but his inward conviction that he’d die by his own hand before consenting to any such law instituted in Remalna was the only defined emotion he had to hold onto.

  When a king no longer represents the kingdom’s interests, only his own... his goals could be perceived as harmful to the very kingdom he was sworn to protect. If that happens, then... it may fall to others to defend the kingdom, Shevraeth’s father had said before his son’s departure to Marloven Hess.

  Vidanric had said in disbelief, So you are telling me that you and the other nobles might have to defend Remalna against the king? I don’t understand. Why would he want the entire kingdom as an enemy?

  You have to reframe the question to begin to comprehend it. Galdran does not want us as enemies. He wants us to fall in with his goals. What those goals are, we don’t know, beyond building a great army at the cost of other things. We suspect that he’s connived at murder to begin attaining his goals. Nothing is going to happen for a while, except that we become more careful, and more watchful. And you go away for training. Remember, my son, in Marloven Hess you will not only hone your military skills—and despite their internal problems the Marlovens are still the best in the southern half of the world—you are to learn as much of statecraft as you can, by observing a once great kingdom in the midst of change.

  Statecraft, Shevraeth thought bitterly, his fists gripped tightly at his sides.

  Forthan left the line of seniors, and removed his wand, then his belt, and finally his tunic, handing them to another boy. This deliberate ritual made it clear at last to Shevraeth that they wouldn’t disgrace their uniforms, even if they disgraced themselves. He walked to the wooden post that someone had set up. Shevraeth lost the relative comfort of memory, and the moral superiority of disgust. He was locked in the now as Retren Forthan cooperated in the process of his hands being made fast: consent to the unthinkable.

  Galdran did not ask for consent when he murdered heirs he didn’t think would be loyal to him personally. Even when they were loyal to the kingdom.

  Try as he might, Shevraeth could not lose his mind in questions of Remalna’s current problems, its past, or its future. Little things—the sound of Stad’s breathing directly to his right—kept forcing his attention to the here and now.

  This is as bad as it gets. I’ll survive it. Janold was right, it’s not me there.

  But it d
id get worse, from the first sound of the wooden cane hitting human flesh, a sound loud in that utterly silent courtyard, all bounded by stone, so noise was mercilessly thrown back at those gathered inside. For there were no trumpets or drums, there was no counting out loud, only the master (and he wore black from head to toe, including over his face, so his identity vanished behind symbolism) with his long yew cane striking the boy across the shoulder-blades.

  Three. Four. Five.

  Shevraeth shut his eyes, but then the sound seemed louder. Memory, where is memory when you need it? Not warnings, good things—rides, laughter, Russav’s sarcasm when he was teased by Tamara Chamadis—Eight, nine, why couldn’t he think of something else?

  So he opened his eyes and glanced at the extreme edge of his vision down his own barracks line. Revealed on those profiles was a range of naked emotion: grief, shock, anger, terror. Nermand’s eyes were closed, his mouth compressed. But in Gannan’s steady gaze, his parted lips, Shevraeth witnessed the avidity of excitement, of bloodlust, and his guts wrenched. He had to mutter the Waste Spell as a surge of burning nastiness rose in his throat.

  Twenty. Twenty-one.

  Not even half-way! I don’t want to count. Think of home, what is Russav doing now, let’s see, the time here is morning—was that a sound? He did, he made a sound! Think! Don’t listen, if it’s first bells of the morning here, it’s got to be midafternoon bells in Remalna—

  It worsened when Forthan broke and gasped, a high shuddering gasp that caused Shevraeth’s gut to tighten into a cold mass of agony. The agony worsened when Shevraeth glanced up once and saw the shocking brightness of blood down that white shirt, and not only there, but splattered on the dust.

  It worsened yet again when three boys, one in Mud House, and two small ones, slipped soundlessly to the ground and were left to lie there on the stones.

  And worsened when Forthan fainted, and they woke him up to finish the last five strokes.

  Lights flickered around the edge of Shevraeth’s vision. He repeated Janold’s words over and over, until he became aware that he was whispering, but at least he whispered in his home language, and anyway no one gave him so much as a glance as Forthan was carried away, his legs worming as he tried to stand but couldn’t, and the next senior marched out of line.

  They got the longest one over first. Shevraeth was not the only one who sweated coldly in anguish for those awaiting their turn. After they were gone the horror gradually lessened, though some wept silent, burning tears. Surreptitious tears, left on their faces to dry, for no one moved except those who had slipped for a time out of the demands of the physical plane, to wake up lying on the stones, shaky and miserable. No one paid them any heed. It was enough of a punishment to wake up there on the stones, knowing one had passed out right in front of everyone.

  When the last senior was taken away, still no words were spoken. Zheirban dismissed them in rows—neat rows, sharply turning, walking swiftly—to their first rank testing, his voice so like the crack of that yew cane the smaller boys jumped, and one of them began to grizzle as they were led away, his mate whispering “Shut up! They’ll think we’re babies.”

  As soon as Ponytail House reached the relative safety of the stone corridor some of Shevraeth’s bunkmates who resented Shevraeth’s ability to remain cool and expressionless looked into his face and saw his sightless gaze, his clenched jaw and whitened mouth, and those who sought vindication in his inability to hide his distress found it, the rest saw only a mirror to their own emotions. For Shevraeth had lost, at least that morning, the court mask that he’d been trained to hide his emotions behind since childhood.

  By now all but the most willfully stupid knew that he suffered the same emotions they did, only he was better at hiding them.

  They also saw that Gannan, alone, had enjoyed the morning. Even Nermand had trouble with that.

  By the time Shevraeth reached the riding court, the sense of sick shock had tightened inexorably to rage. He trembled with the effort it took not to run, to get as far from these people as he could, not to shout his utter rejection of them and their so-called regulations. Their laughable notion of honor.

  All these smoldering emotions snuffed into nothing when he entered the riding court and there, standing among the waiting masters, was Senelac, her eyes red-rimmed.

  Then he remembered that her brother had been one of the very last. The impulse to speak words of commiseration to Senelac, who he’d been seeing nearly every day for months—talking, laughing, sharing steep or cocoa after his lessons—started him a step or two in her direction until her eyes, ranging over the boys, met his, and the wrath he saw in her wide, blinkless gaze, her tense brow, knocked him back as if she’d slapped him.

  Wrath. He had no idea why, or even what her private relations were like with her family, for she never spoke of them. But now, it was clear, she wanted no pity, least of all his.

  He did not understand why he was seized with an intense desire equal to his previous disgust to prove himself, to ride like he’d never ridden yet. The impulse was there, a fire in every nerve and muscle, and so ride he did, his hands a smooth line of communication from elbow to halter as he sent his familiar mount not only around the court but over the obstacle run, at the invitation of the watching masters.

  It wasn’t a faultless ride—he knew enough now to recognize his weaknesses—but it was good, in fact far better than most of his bunkmates who were overconfident in their abilities or were still mentally back in that parade court where the blood was being scrubbed from the stones by the remaining seniors.

  At the end of the test, after he dismounted, he looked Senelac’s way. She did not smile, not once that day, but she gave him a tiny chin-lift of approval that flamed along his nerves.

  FIFTEEN

  The rest of the day that small triumph carried him along, and he acquitted himself adequately. He knew he was not one of the best, but he was far from being the worst, except at archery.

  When at last they returned to their barracks after the evening meal, the sight of the largely empty senior tables did not smite Ponytail House into silence. Most of the boys had recovered their wits and their readiness to find entertainment in the smallest thing. Or maybe it was a sense of release, but the jokes, stupid as they were, kept volleying back and forth, and they were not the only ones. A general feeling of strained hilarity pervaded the mess hall.

  Back in the barracks, they dashed through the cleaning frame, snapping away the last of the sharp smell of sweat from the day’s emotional obstacle course. They fell to speculating about their ranking in the testing, which would determine their assignment for the big summer wargame.

  Shevraeth had not spoken once that day. He collapsed onto his bed, thinking of taking out one of his endless letters, but when he felt for the top of his trunk, his hand encountered two square shapes: a book, and the smooth cold of metal.

  The others talked in small groups, or played games, or lay staring upward. No one was looking his way. He slid off his bed and knelt at the side of his trunk, which had not been opened. The items had been set on top of it, unnoticed by anyone unless they crouched there and peered under the bed.

  The book was a private memoir, written by one of the Montredaun-An kings. Shevraeth opened it with careful hands, cold thrilling his nerves when he saw the faded ink, the old paper, and when he looked for but did not see the sigil indicating a copy. This, then, was the real thing, written by that long-dead king’s own hand.

  Shevraeth laid the book carefully on his knee, and turned to the second item, which was a gold case, gleaming with muted but rich highlights. It looked like a magical scroll case, only it wasn’t round. Puzzled, Shevraeth clicked it open to find a square of paper inside. It was written in a neat hand, the same hand that had lettered the cities and counties of his own kingdom on the map up in the king’s study. The note was a brief instruction for sending letters by magic, adding that another letter-case had been transferred by magic spell to his fathe
r.

  No rules, no warnings, no admonitions, just the instructions. And it was signed with two small letters: M-A.

  Shevraeth frowned, trying to think who might have those initials, but he was hampered by knowing so few first names. Then he studied the little paper again, and this time noticed the marking between the two letters indicating two joined names.

  He looked up, not sure what to think, except that M-A could only be Senrid Montredaun-An.

  o0o

  Father:

  I gather you received one of these, too.

  Today we had to line up and witness a ritual punishment. I will not detail it. I want to write it even less than you want to read it. Its result was to give me an aversion to this place strong enough to have nearly caused me to bolt. Had you been a day’s ride away, and not four months, I probably would have.

  But three things stopped me. One, people get over terrible things faster than I thought possible. Maybe faster than is right. In the morning I hated this place and everything about it as well as everyone in it. By noon I was like the others, riding in triumph at having impressed the masters conducting the tests with little things I’d learned. Maybe that means something is wrong with me—or maybe I’m not as civilized as I liked to think.

  The second thing I discovered is harder to describe, but arises out of the book I was lent. When I opened it, I discovered a ribbon marking a certain page, which dealt with an affair not dissimilar to today’s.

  This king, whose reputation is formidable enough that we’ve heard his name at our continent-wide remove, had written afterward, in archaic language I don’t translate well:

  When people carry out a role in crown rituals, they are signifying their agreement with how power is not only defined, but shared. If that ritual is described by law, and carried out as described, then each might know what to expect given a choice of behaviors. If the outcome of the ritual is altered by royal whim, then the outcome of a choice becomes less predictable. In which case, why choose the right action?