“So, you’ve finally decided to join me!” the physician said, smiling at him. “You’ll be glad to know that a sword is no longer sticking through your leg, and the blood has stopped leaking out of you and staining the blankets.” He bent to examine the wound. “Yes,” he muttered, “if I were foolish enough to want such a wound, this would be the kind to wish for, clean, straight, and thankfully missing the bone and major arteries.” He straightened and smiled again.
“Where is Salick?” Garet rasped, his throat dry as dust.
Banerict helped him to a sitting position and gave him a cup of water from the small table beside the bed. “She is with Mandarack and some other Masters at the Palace, making peace with the King and his Council of Lords,” he told him. “But other friends of yours are waiting. Shall I summon them?”
Garet nodded weakly. He closed his eyes for only a moment, it seemed, when he heard Marick’s outraged whisper to the physician.
“I thought you said he was awake, Banerict.”
“He is, more or less, Marick,” Banerict replied calmly. “He’s lost enough blood to make him sleepy for a few days, and that leg will take a fortnight to heal, but he will recover fully.”
It didn’t seem worth the trouble to speak, and soon it was quiet again. He must have slept, for when he opened his eyes, he was thirsty again, and Master Tarix, not Marick, was there beside him in her wheeled chair, offering him a cup of water.
“So, the rumours are true, Garet; you’re not dead after all,” she laughed. “I’m glad, especially with all the time I’ve invested in your training.” The bruises on her face were fiercely purpled, making her look more damaged than the young man in the bed.
Garet eased himself up carefully and drank from the cup again. Feeling at last able to speak, he asked, “How are you, Master?”
“Bruised and sore, but otherwise happy,” she answered, and bent in her chair to look at his leg. Banerict had tied the edges of the wound together with silk threads dipped in some liquid to discourage infection. The threads pulled and stung whenever he moved.
Satisfied, she sat back and asked, “How are you?”
“Light headed, Master,” he replied truthfully. “The King gave us wine.”
“And trouble, too, I see,” she said, clicking her tongue.
“That was Shoronict and Draneck,” he said. “Who did this, I mean.” He pointed to his leg. Still thirsty, he reached to the table for more water, but found none. Turning back, he found Tarix studying him carefully.
“I wonder if you know what a name you have made in this Hall, Garet.”
He did not answer.
“You have forced many of us to look at things as you must—from the outside,” she laughed. “It’s an uncomfortable view for many of us. Even Master Mandarack couldn’t split open six-hundred years of tradition on his own.”
“I know I am an outsider, Master,” he said quietly. After all he had seen and done, he knew it was still the most important fact of his life.
“No one is born to the Hall,” she replied, laying a hand on his.
“But won’t you and Master Relict have children in this Hall?” he asked, then apologized when he saw Tarix flush. “I’m sorry, Master, that was rude. I should never…”
She shook her head, taking away her hand and stifling a laugh. “No, Garet. I’d forgotten how all-encompassing your curiosity can be.” She looked down. “If Heaven blesses us, we might try reducing our patrols and other duties in the Hall for a few years to raise a child. Some Banes even leave the Hall and return to their old homes to do so.” She gave a small, self-conscious sigh. “But it is difficult to live more than one life. That is why most Bane couples give up their children to be raised by relatives. And there is, of course, no guarantee that the child will be a Bane.”
To live two lives, Garet thought. He remembered Salick saying, long ago, that a Bane had no time to be anything else.
“Then why get married?” he asked, more to himself than to his visitor.
Her startled whoop shocked him out of his reverie. “Garet,” she said, fighting back tears of laughter, “there are some questions that you just can’t expect people to answer!”
He ruefully shared her amusement, the tension easing from his tired body. She picked up the long crutches from her lap and slid them onto the bed beside him.
“Take these. You’ll need a pair for a while.”
“But Master, these are yours,” he said. “You’ll need them!”
“Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “That crazy woman Dasanat and our own Banerict are conspiring to try and fix this leg,” she said, slapping her bent limb. “He wants to re-break it to let it heal straight; he still curses the last physician we had when I broke it, and Dasanat swears she can cobble me some sort of brace to hold it steady when I walk.” She thrust out the smaller set of crutches and rolled her chair towards the door. “Whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll need this chair for a while longer, even if they’re not mad.”
“Why is Dasanat here?” he asked. The last time he had seen the Mechanical, she had been so involved with her work that she barely left Andarack’s house to eat or sleep.
She paused at the door and wheeled her chair around to face him again. “She’s the one who brought word of Andarack’s capture,” she told him. “That’s been fixed, by the way. Once the Duelists were broken up and sent packing, he was found at their training yard, along with Gonect, both chained to the wall and spitting mad.” She laughed. “The other Ward Lords were so incensed that the King had their full support, and all their Ward guards to help get rid of those pompous bullies!”
After a moment of silence, she spoke again. “You’re a Green now and should apprentice to a Master. I know that you owe Mandarack much, but if you decide to look to another Master, I would be pleased to accept you as my apprentice, if Banerict can make me fit for patrolling again, that is.”
Without waiting for a reply from the stunned Bane, she twisted her chair to line up with the door and propelled herself quickly back towards the gymnasiums.
Choosing a Master, Garet thought. He had forgotten all about his promotion. Looking at his uniform, folded at the foot of his bed, he saw a green sash peeking out from below the tunic. Leaning back on his pillow, he shook his head. No wonder, with all this excitement he would probably forget his own name if people didn’t keep calling him by it.
“Garet!” a voice called from the doorway, and he spent a pleasant hour with Marick and Dorict learning of the latest events. The Council of Lords was holding Draneck for trial. The Duelists were suppressed, and the King was singing the Banehall’s praises, at least publicly.
Later in the day, Salick came rushing in. After many welcome, though awkward embraces, she explained why she had been absent.
“Honestly, if the Council could decide anything faster than mud crawling uphill, we would have been done in an hour,” she complained, sitting on the bed beside him and transferring the tray of food she had brought from the chair to his lap.
He asked her a question that had been on his mind, now that he had time to think again. “Where is Master Adrix?”
“In his quarters, with Farix and a few others,” she said. “There’s only a few that didn’t accept Master Mandarack as the new Hallmaster. They’ve all given their promise to the other Masters that they won’t try anything.”
“Adrix is screaming bloody murder,” added Marick, who had followed her in, clucking his tongue at their displays of affection, “but only Farix is there to hear it.”
“How do you know?” Salick asked suspiciously.
“Oh, I had business outside his door today.”
Salick rolled her eyes. “Well, he can scream all he wants, his name wasn’t even mentioned at the Council meeting today. I think that they’ve all decided to pretend he doesn’t exist,” she said. “It’s more convenient that way for the King and the Hall.”
“Did the King support us in Council?” Garet asked around a mouthful
of roast chicken.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Green!” she teased. “Of course he did, but every Ward Lord except Andarack had to be listened to while they droned on about tradition and duty and how none of this was their fault.” She grimaced. “Finally Master Mandarack shut them all up by explaining why this new demon is so dangerous, and telling them what they needed to do to help us.” She stole a chicken leg from his plate. “After that, they practically got down on their pudgy knees and begged him and the King to make peace,” she said, waving the drumstick in the air. “They signed the agreement an hour ago.”
“If you’re done taking the food from a wounded Bane’s mouth,” Garet laughed, “maybe you can tell me if the Caller has reappeared.”
Salick shook her head. “Not yet. In the last two days, patrols have encountered two normal demons, if the word can be used to describe such things. One was another Crawler and the other a Rat Demon,” she said. “Both were broadcasting fear. They were easily tracked and killed before they did anyone harm.”
“Do you think it’s gone?” Garet asked.
“Perhaps the stars have shifted into a less dangerous zone,” Salick replied and deepened her voice to add, “dearie.” Marick grabbed his neck, as if choking.
Garet had already become heartily sick of staying in bed during his last visit to the infirmary and was even more vocal about it this time, so Banerict soon gave him permission to travel anywhere on the main floor as long as he used the crutches and rested his leg wherever he ended up. He got in many people’s way until he found a bench in the Green gym. There, he watched Master Branet limp bear-like around the room, yelling at the sweating Greens and assuring each one that, “any demon that catches you out in the fields is welcome to you, as none of you is any use to the Banehall until you can thrust that trident like a real Green!”
Garet watched and trembled, hoping he would do well enough to please this demanding Master. He came back often to try to learn what he could before he had to perform with the others. Branet, busy with his cajoling and disappointments, mostly ignored him.
As his wound began to heal, he leaned on a single crutch and practiced with his rope-hammer in the infirmary garden, aiming at rocks Marick or Dorict placed on top of the low wall for him to hit. This activity was eventually stopped by Banerict, who complained that the noise was driving his patients back to their duties before they were fully healed.
Garet sighed and wished for active employment. Salick answered this wish by sending him to help Master Arict search for information about the Caller Demon in the oldest records of the Hall. This was the research she herself had attempted earlier at Mandarack’s orders, without much success. After a week of dust and shouting, and cryptic references that after much reflection actually meant nothing at all, he stopped making wishes.
Several Banes came by to speak to him: Blues he had trained with, several Greens and Golds who worked under Masters sympathetic to Mandarack, and some he did not even recognize. Vinir stopped by between patrols, smiling and bringing him treats from the kitchen. They spoke of the progress the Ward Lords had made in finding ways to alert the Hall if the Caller Demon returned.
“They have citizen patrols to bolster the Ward Guards,” she told him. “My old Granny is out every evening with her friends, peering into every alley and scaring the life out of couples looking for a quiet place to kiss.” She laughed at his sudden blush. “I suppose you and Salick will have to be careful!”
Garet’s embarrassment deepened. He and Salick had not yet kissed, but it was very much on his mind.
“I never guessed she would lose her heart so soon,” Vinir continued. “And to someone from the Midlands, when all she could ever talk about was the Shirath Hall and the duty of the Shirath Banes.” She shook her head in wonder.
“I don’t know why she, we…” Garet faltered.
Banerict came by with a tray of cordials for the aged Banes clustered around the hearth at the far end of the infirmary. He smiled at them but did not stop to chat.
“Don’t you?” Vinir asked, grinning. “Well, at least you’re not puffed up! She chose you because you came from outside, idiot!” she said. “You don’t fit into her expectations of other Banes, which are rarely met, I might add. When Master Mandarack chose her, many said it was because both were from noble families, and she really didn’t deserve such a great Bane as a Master. Salick met that resentment and returned it, doubled. It isolated her. Plus, she’s always been careful about whom she would allow to get close.” She held up a hand and ticked off fingers. “Myself, mainly because we came from the same Ward, and she saw me as a Ward sister to be protected.” She pulled one finger down. “When I first came here, I was a little mouse…” She giggled at his raised eyebrows. “Yes, yes, I don’t seem very shy now, do I? Salick protected me from the cruel ones like Farix. You should have seen her, a Black telling off a Green and getting away with it!”
She was silent for a moment with the memory until she noticed Garet’s impatience. “Don’t worry, I’ll get to the point in a week or two! Now, let’s see…oh yes! Marick and Dorict soon followed as part of her new family, but never a boyfriend or even a crush.” Two more fingers were pulled down. She looked at him thoughtfully, her smile disappearing. “I thought for a long time that she would measure every man against her Master and they’d come up short, because the only other measure she had was her drunkard of a father.” She poked the last finger held up into his chest for emphasis.
“I’m neither as good as the Master or as bad as her father,” Garet protested.
“No, but you argue with her. I mean, you stand up to her, but you don’t bully her,” Vinir said. “You accept her for who she is. What else could she want, difficult as my friend can be?”
Garet nodded slowly. He remembered how she had slowly come to accept him and listen to him. With difficulty, he conjured an image of Salick as he had first seen her, an arrogant, sneering girl who had almost made him run away from his new life as a Bane. He shook his head. There was no sense looking back; he had been a different person too.
Vinir stood and put a hand on his shoulder. It was long-fingered and delicate, but traced with the thin, white lines of training scars. A true Bane’s hand, he thought.
“Salick’s happy,” she said. “Or at least as happy as she allows herself to be. So I’m happy too.” She kissed his forehead and left the infirmary.
Between visits and research, he took one more duty upon himself. With Dorict’s help, he gathered paper, ink, and pen and finally wrote to his mother. The letter was long. He wrote of what he had done, of what he had learned, and of his hopes to see her and his sister Allia again one day. Dorict promised to send it with the next messenger to Bangt and so on to Three Roads. A burden whose true weight he had not known was lifted from his heart.
So occupied, he healed as quickly as he could, and after another week and a half of complaints, Banerict took away his crutches and begged him never to be injured again. Garet grinned and sincerely thanked the physician before limping happily out of the infirmary.
The two flights of stairs to his room made him less happy, and he stayed on the third floor for the rest of the day, reading a Gold text and enjoying the victory of at least sitting on his own bed. That evening, he told Salick that he intended to apprentice under Master Tarix, as soon as she recovered from the breaking and re-setting of her leg.
“Oh, I see,” Salick said, her voice becoming somewhat distant. “May I ask why you didn’t choose Master Mandarack?”
Garet took a deep breath. He had known this conversation might be a difficult one. “Because Mandarack is your Master, Salick,” he told her.
She thought about it for a minute and nodded for him to continue.
“Well,” he said, “I think it’s partly a matter of ah, rank. I don’t mean to reject him! You know how much I respect him, and I know that you think of the Master as your father.” He rushed on before she could speak. “That’s why you care for
him so much, and I wouldn’t want to intrude on that,” he said.
She shook her head, either in doubt or confusion, but did not say anything.
“And,” he said quietly, “if I apprentice to Master Mandarack, you’ll always be my superior. We won’t be equals.”
“I’ll still outrank you either way,” she said. “And besides, I’ve been your superior since you got here.” Her voice was not as cold, but her eyes were still guarded.
“It’s not the same if we look to different Masters, and you know it,” he argued. “Would you want to be ordering me around all the time?”
“Maybe I would,” she replied, smiling at him. “But I think I see what you mean. There could be times when I’d have to order you to do something dangerous, and I don’t know if I could, after what happened to you at the Palace.” She leaned her head against his. “I was so afraid,” she said.
Garet relaxed. He had been worried that Salick would not understand his decision. There was another reason he had not given her. He knew himself now, enough to realize that it was his nature to question everything, including his Masters. Tarix knew that and still asked. But what if Mandarack was his Master? Salick was fiercely, perhaps even blindly, loyal to Mandarack. Any dispute between Garet and the Hallmaster would force her to choose between them. It was a risk he did not want to take. It was hard truth to face, but he was afraid that in such a competition, he would lose.
There was a tap on the door.
Garet sat up and put some distance between him and Salick. They had kissed earlier, a nervous, awkward event, and he had been thinking of improving on that first attempt. The tap sounded again. Later, Garet thought, happiness warming his chest now that ‘later’ was once again assured. “Come in!” he called.
Dorict opened the door and entered, followed by a grumbling Marick.
“I don’t see why we have to knock on our own door,” he complained.
Dorict ignored him and settled on his bed. Marick paced. “What’s wrong?” Salick demanded.
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