A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  Landeth’s bushy red brows rose. “You don’t mean the scout-and-track.”

  “Codes. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. They all love codes, if they think there’s some secret or reward. But we lay them out like the clues for the tracking exercise. It’s a kind of seek-and-find, not tracking people, but clues, they have to figure them out, then hunt for more clues.”

  “It’s brilliant,” Landeth said. “What about the code? We aren’t prepared.”

  “I think I can put something together really fast,” Shevraeth said, considering what had worked and what hadn’t on the comm games.

  Landeth snorted a laugh. “You’ve got until we’re done with cook-wash and perimeter setup. How much of a perimeter do you need?”

  They discussed the landmarks as the light began to fade, then Shevraeth withdrew into the rad tent to get his end done. It was full dark when he finished staking down the torches and hiding the last of the messages; he’d been careful to keep the tents between him and the boys, who were busy singing ballads and thumping hand drums, organized by Landeth.

  When he returned, they ended the last song. Landeth divided them, Shevraeth explained the rules, and released them. They exploded out into the huge square marked off by ruddy torchlight, and soon their cries, laughter, and excited commands to one another, threats, and insults (to which no one listened) rose on the soft summer air.

  The game lasted until far beyond the usual scrub night games. The boys kept at it until they heard the faint echo of the watch bells for midnight. Landeth called a halt. Despite the yells of disappointment, most of them were drooping. They’d managed to find most of the hidden pieces of paper, and had divided themselves into ridings—some to decode, others to raid the enemies’ papers (preferably ones nearly decoded)—which meant that some of the papers traded back and forth without much headway made on the codes. This was the cause of the shrillest confrontations, for some were entirely subsumed by the challenge of the codes, others by the irresistible urge to scarfle someone else’s work without having to do any decoding themselves. Thus no one won, but they had worked hard, and so were given House points, which pleased them all.

  The House rads got them established in their tents, then one pair went to rest against morning duty and the other left on the midnight outer perimeter patrol.

  Landeth and Shevraeth sat by the campfire and brewed up some coffee.

  The usual snickers, insults, and attempts at contests lasted a very short time before the shrill cries of “Shut up! I want to sleep!” signalled an end to the long day.

  Complete quiet descended with suspicious speed, but when Shevraeth and Landeth, experienced in the unsubtle subterfuges of small boys, checked the tents, it was to find the deep, even breathing of exhausted slumber.

  Back at the campfire, Landeth said, “That was inspired. For that, I’ll take the dead watch. I got to sleep in anyway, and you didn’t.”

  Shevraeth withdrew to the tent, leaving Landeth to a quiet night.

  FORTY

  Senelac grinned. “It was a great idea. Caris tells me her brother and Marec and the others down in the lower academy from pups to colts are busy putting together paper chases as if they’ve just been invented, and weren’t popular when our grandparents were young.” She eyed Shevraeth, who gave her that faint smile that meant he was sitting on some sort of story, probably about his young days.

  The usual spurt of resentment burned through her, to be determinedly dismissed.

  She looked up into his sun-browned face, his light gray eyes, the pale drift of fine, silky hair across his brow. Listened to the sound of his breathing as they walked aimlessly along the river’s edge. He looked like a Marloven, he should be one. Oh, she knew how stupid it was to hope one day he’d decide to stay, that he would not go back to wherever-it-was with the bad king and the silly girls who didn’t know the difference between a bow and an arrow.

  Shevraeth had no idea what she was thinking. She never talked about her emotions, or shared anything beyond their life here at the academy. So he had no idea why she stiffened and turned cold this time. The last time she’d frosted him was after he’d accidentally encountered Marec, before that whole Marlovair mess. Senelac afterward had said that if she wanted to get together with two people instead of one—and have Everyone Talking About It—she would set it up beforehand. End of conversation, end of day.

  Gate.

  Shevraeth had been careful since. If he was meeting her, he treated his departure like a covert exercise, taking care to avoid anyone else he knew. Even though they were not breaking any rules. Spoken rules. Unspoken... well, he had a good sense of the academy ones, but he obviously had plenty to learn about the unspoken rules between girls and boys, because he still could not figure out where the problem lay.

  They paced side by side in silence, but not the companionable silence when she thumped up against his arm. He worked mentally through what he’d said and she’d said. Everything had been great all evening until she brought up the scrubs’ treasure hunt. He hadn’t made any comment at all about home, or any of the things she got prickly over. So... what happened?

  He began to wonder if he was imagining things when they neared a curve of the river that lay adjacent to the alleyway they all called Academy Run. It was a short cut to the academy tunnel, and when the bells caught someone by surprise at the end of their liberty watch, you’d often see seniors sprinting at top speed to get in bounds before the bells’ echo went silent.

  Senelac gave him a brisk wave, meant to be casual but it was far too abrupt for that. She vanished into a crowd of prentices celebrating someone’s promotion.

  Walking along down the alley, Shevraeth was aware of his mood cooling from anticipation to bitterness. How could he have done something wrong when he’d done nothing at all?

  “Shevraeth!”

  He turned around, relieved to be interrupted. The left-hand boundary of Academy Run was the massive city wall. To the right streets angled off, shops below and living quarters above, most of the windows open to the balmy night air. People-shaped silhouettes moved about in the upper story of a flax-weaver’s shop. Laughter floated out, and the chink of crockery, but the young men’s voices he’d heard had not come from there.

  Another laugh. He turned all the way around, to discover five or six fellows in guard uniforms coming up the alley, one talking, the rest laughing as they passed into the shafts of golden light slanting down from the flax-weaver’s.

  “Shevraeth!”

  That was Lennac, who beckoned for him to join them. Forthan walked by Lennac’s side.

  Shevraeth waited until they caught up. Now he recognized them all from lance practice over winter. They were new to the King’s Guard, academy seniors last year or the year before. Joking comments revealed they were walking back after a day of liberty in the guards’ favorite pleasure house, Lennac having won in a long gambling session.

  “You’re allowed to gamble for money in the Guard, I take it,” Shevraeth asked.

  “Of course,” Lennac said with the pride of a new guard.

  One of the others snorted. “They’d do it anyway.”

  In the academy, you could wager for chores, or for things, but actual money changing hands had a stiff punishment, one that was never waived. Gambling for money inside the academy was not done, hadn’t been even in the worst days of the Regent. That much Shevraeth had learned.

  A shout from the flax-weavers above caused them all to look up.

  “Must be some wedding,” one fellow observed.

  “Hackle-change,” the fifth fellow said, as another shout burst from all the open windows, followed by the sound of a drum and then rhythmic stamping. Seeing various looks of question (but comprehension from Forthan and one other) he said, “You know they sun-bleach flax.”

  Grunts and murmurs of assent.

  “Best flax is bleached for a year. Then, mid-summer, they change the old hackles for the new. Celebrate. Weavers take off the
hackled flax, which is now soft and white as yeath hair. Ready to commence weaving. Big celebration first.”

  Nods and shrugs of polite acceptance underscored most of the fellows’ indifference to how flax became linen.

  Lennac said to Shevraeth, “Anyway, among us. Academy boys doing our two years of King’s Guard before we’re made patrol captains. If we gamble, the winner spends it on the others. Big dinner. Drink. Fun.”

  Forthan put in, “The lifers spit at this rule. Half the fun of gambling for them is fighting, sometimes dueling.”

  Lennac said, “But us. We’ve been playing with one another for years.”

  The fifth fellow hiccupped. “’less you hate someone,” he slurred wisely. “Strip him o’his earnings. Spend liberty on his butt inna guard barracks. Hah!”

  “I don’t gamble with anyone I hate.” One of the guards smacked a fist into the other palm. “If I want trouble with him, I can find another way.”

  Shevraeth said, “I never thought of that before. Gambling, I mean. Money. Why not money?”

  Lennac explained, “Unpaid gambling debts in the very old days didn’t only cause dueling between seniors. Enough causes for that. They sparked off family feuds when fathers came to collect their boys at the end of harvest season.”

  Clan wars, Shevraeth thought. Ah. That possibly explained some of the unexplained references in the histories he’d read.

  Today’s winnings had apparently been equal to Lennac’s innate generosity. Shevraeth sensed that they were all agreeably tipsy. While Lennac was enlarging on the more spectacular family feuds of history the one who hadn’t spoken began smacking his hands in a galloping rhythm against every wooden fence or window they passed, and when Lennac finished talking, the fellow started to sing.

  At once the others joined. The fellow continued whacking everything they passed, keeping time, as they shouted out an old ballad.

  . . . they rode the four horses and galloped the river. . .

  Forthan stepped up next to Shevraeth, his manner that of someone desiring private speech. Shevraeth obligingly slowed his steps.

  . . . Sword and shield clashing, blue sparks a-rising. . .

  As the chorus soared in loud, enthusiastic but tuneless voices around them, Forthan murmured, “You’ll be finding out tomorrow, but get your sleep tonight. Tomorrow night command meeting. We’ll all be there.”

  Just like that, the tension of impending trouble was back.

  “Might be a long meeting,” Forthan observed.

  Shevraeth flicked him a glance. So obvious a statement in so meditative a voice meant in anyone else that there was something quite unrelated on Forthan’s mind.

  Shevraeth did not really know Forthan, not even after spending a winter tutoring him. What little he did know was straightforward, without social artifice.

  Yet that flick revealed a fellow who was so uncomfortable his entire demeanor seemed uncertain. What military threat or difficulty could possibly unsettle him? Shevraeth was thinking he did not want to know when Forthan mumbled, “... girls.”

  Hoofbeats athunder, arrows like lightning.

  Shevraeth said, “Girls?”

  Forthan gave him a quick, doubtful look, almost a wince, and it was then that Shevraeth finally understood that there was no military crisis involving the girls. This was a personal question.

  He slowed his steps even more, Forthan matching his pace, and Forthan said, after a quick look at his friends, “They talk to you. How?”

  The friends were shouting the song, sometimes joined by people in windows above, amid laughter, as the one fellow drummed tattoos on every window or fence he encountered, then hopped on to the next.

  Shevraeth bit back a sarcastic retort, They open their mouths and shape the words. Not to Forthan, who was... serious about this question. “Do you mean, why am I popular, or what do I say to them when they come round? Because I don’t actually do anything to make them come round. I think—I think I’m popular because... because one of their leaders seems to like me.”

  “Senelac.” Forthan breathed the name, and Shevraeth’s blood ran to ice.

  Flanking the enemy, swift as a hawk.

  Not just his blood. His mind numbed, as if he’d stepped into a rushing stream and slipped over a waterfall. He began to babble, not really considering what he said. “I was raised chattering with girls. And boys. Chatter being the mode, without much matter. With most of the girls here, asking a historical question or something about the horses bridges an awkward moment. But it’s true there aren’t many of those, they mostly... talk. And I listen, and answer, because they—most of them—like to talk, and like me to listen.”

  He went on a little more. Forthan’s unwavering attention made Shevraeth feel extraordinarily awkward. He sensed that Forthan was lending his stupid words far too much import, as if trying to descry more meaning than Shevraeth intended.

  Valor makes victory, the price is our blood.

  And so he considered what Forthan was really asking, which was not ‘how to talk to girls.’ Shevraeth would no more send Forthan to Senrid’s library to memorize impressive historical facts as conversational openers than Forthan would obey.

  Not that it took long to consider. Forthan’s tightened mouth, his lowered eyes when Shevraeth mentioned Senelac and her knowledge of history made it fairly clear what was really being asked, but the truth... it did hurt.

  An act of mercy every day. Not that he needed his mother’s admonition. He owed Forthan and Senelac the honor of the truth.

  And so, with a fair assumption of his customary casual voice, he added, “Senelac seems to be their Danas Valdlav without their having one, so whatever, or in my case, whomever she takes an interest might draw the others, but since we aren’t twoing—” He shrugged.

  Since we aren’t twoing. And saw revealed by the light of the sentry torches above them the impact in Forthan’s face.

  Shevraeth kept on talking, just chatter, mainly, moving from his interest in Marloven history to talk about the academy horses and what the girls had told him. Nothing enlightening. Nothing Forthan did not know already, but it served to smooth away the terrible awkward moment, as if it hadn’t happened. Because he’d answered the real question, the true question, the one Forthan could not bear to ask.

  The academy tunnel was around the next corner, which Shevraeth was glad of. He brought his chatter to a close and flipped up his hand in farewell. Then veered off, unnoticed by the singers, who were now on verse fourteen of that bloodthirsty ballad.

  Forthan raised his hand in silent salute.

  FORTY-ONE

  “. . . and I can’t find them,” Evrec said grimly.

  “I’m going to thump Van blind,” Stad retorted, flushing with anger.

  They were the first ones at Keriam’s office, Shevraeth having walked over with Stad from the senior barracks. They were on liberty, which made it easy to leave—most of the others on liberty were in the rec room, as it was raining outside.

  Evrec had come straight over from the barracks, by special arrangement with his fellow rads, in order to talk to Stad.

  He’d hesitated when he saw Shevraeth, but Stad had said, “Hasn’t changed.”

  All three knew it meant: hadn’t changed from his tight-lipped first year.

  Evrec opened a hand, and then poured out in a disjointed flurry of words that Van Marlovair and his gang in Jump House had begun going missing during the rec time they only recently had begun to earn back. It was, strictly speaking, rec time, and therefore their time to do whatever they wanted, but rads always knew where their charges were, at least they did if they ventured out in large groups. The entire House had vanished. Not only Van’s gang. All of them.

  Stad smacked his hand into his palm. “And they’ve been so quiet. So good. Now what? I tell you, when I find my cousin—”

  A quick step at the doorway. They turned their heads—and Senrid dashed in, then slowed, scanning them. “What is it?”

  Stad flush
ed again, turning away as if he’d done something wrong.

  Evrec stood up straight as though on parade. “Whole House missing,” he admitted miserably.

  Senrid said, “They have liberty?”

  Evrec opened his hand in assent. Stad’s brow furrowed in perplexity.

  Because Senrid grinned. “It’s all right. I know where they are. Best if you pretend you don’t know. Remember, they’re on their honor.”

  “Yes, but I can’t find them,” Evrec said. “And this is only their second rec watch. I don’t dare ask all the others if they’ve seen ’em, then word gets around I’ve lost ’em.”

  Senrid’s grin hadn’t abated. “Leave it. You’ll see. As long as they stick to being missing when on liberty, let it rest.”

  The two rads tapped their fingers against their chests, signifying orders received, though the angry flush had not yet faded from Stad’s cheekbones.

  Senrid seemed about to say something else, but the sound of footsteps on the stairs caused him to shrug, then jump up to sit on the edge of Keriam’s desk, one foot twitching back and forth, reminding Shevraeth of a cat’s tail. His back to the window, Senrid faced the room as most of the command class entered, followed swiftly by twos and threes, most a little breathless from running.

  The watch change bell rang. Senrid cast a swift glance around. “Okay. You’re all here.”

  That made everyone look around. Senrid waited for the instinctive scan. Shevraeth looked around with the rest, and saw the two new girls sitting with Senelac over near the wall in the second row.

  Senrid jumped down from the table and began his customary pacing back and forth as he said, “We’re going to stop the comm runs. They don’t work. There has to be a way, but I don’t know what, and no one has any better ideas than I do without resorting to magic. Which would be fine if there wasn’t the problem with wards.”