The Soldier Son Trilogy Bundle

by Robin Hobb

  He grinned even as he narrowed his eyes and warned me, “Now, speak no ill of my future lady, cousin, or we shall have to take it to the dueling grounds!”

  I laughed aloud at that, and then stifled my laugh as I saw Caulder emerge from between two rows of shelved books. He did not glance at us and walked quickly out of the library. Only my abrupt silence and stare alerted Spink to his presence. “Do you think he overheard us?” he asked me worriedly.

  “I doubt it,” I replied. “If he had, it would be very unlike Caulder simply to walk away. He’d have to say something.”

  “I’ve heard his father has told him he isn’t to have anything to do with the Carneston House first-years.”

  “Really. Now that would be the greatest kindness Stiet has done us this year.”

  We both laughed at that, and earned ourselves a glare and a “sshhh” from the cadet at the next table.

  Our studies only became more demanding as the year progressed. The grind of drill, classes, dull meals, and long assignments completed by lantern light carried us into the dim corridor of winter. Winter seemed harsher here in the city than it ever had out on the good, clean plains. The smoke of thousands of stoves filled the winter air. When snow did fall, it was soon speckled with soot. The melting water could not find the drains fast enough; the lawns of the Academy were sodden and the pathways became shallow canals that we splashed through as we marched. Winter seemed to wage a battle against the city, blanketing us with fresh snow and cold freezes, and then the next day giving way to wet fogs and slush underfoot. The snow that fell on the paths and streets of the Academy was soon trampled to a dirty sorbet of ice and mud. The trees stood stark on the lawns, their wet black branches imploring the skies to lighten. We rose before it was light, slopped through the slush to assembly, and then slogged through our classes. Grease our boots as we might, our feet were always wet, and in between inspections, damp socks festooned our rooms like holiday swags. Coughing and sneezing became commonplace, so that on the mornings when I woke with a clear head, I felt blessed. It seemed that our troop no sooner recovered from one sniffling onslaught than the next came along to lay us low. Sickness had to be extreme before we were either excused from classes or permitted into the infirmary, so most of us dragged through the days of illness as best we could.

  Even so, all those miseries would have been bearable, for they fell on all of us alike, first-years, upperclassmen, officers, and even our instructors, but shortly after Spink and I returned from our days away from the Academy, our fellow new noble first-years and we became the targets of a different sort of misery.

  There had always been differences in how the new noble first-years were treated compared to the sons of the older families. We had joked about being given the poorest housing choices, endured Corporal Dent making us eat later than our fellows, and hunched our shoulders to the fact that we received a rougher initiation than that inflicted on first-years of old nobility. Our instructors had seemed aloof from it for the most part. Occasionally they remonstrated with us to uphold the dignity of the Academy despite being new to its traditions. It made us bitterly amused, for no son of any old noble could say that his father had ever attended any sort of military academy, yet many of our fathers had graduated from the old War College. The traditions of a military upbringing were in our bones, while our old noble fellows learned them only now.

  Our classes had been scrupulously segregated for the first third of the year. We always sat in our patrols. New nobles’ sons did not fraternize with the sons of old nobles, despite sometimes sharing the same classrooms. Now our instructors began, not to mingle us, but to make us compete against one another. With increasing frequency, our test scores were listed by patrol and were posted side by side outside the classroom doors, where all could see that the new noble patrols consistently lagged behind the old nobility first-years in academics. The exceptions were drafting and engineering, where we often excelled them, and in drill and on horseback, in which they could not best us.

  As our instructors began to encourage the rivalry between the two groups, I saw healthy competition take on a darker character. One afternoon we raced into the stables, sure that we would triumph over our rivals in an equestrian drill exercise, only to discover that someone had crept in and smeared dung stripes down the sides and flanks of our mounts and filled their tails with burrs. The hasty grooming we had time for was inadequate, and left our horses looking ill kempt. We were marked down for that, and though we won for precision, we lost for overall appearance, and thus the cup and the half day of liberty went to the old nobility troop.

  We muttered at the unfairness of it. Then several of the scale models that belonged to Bringham House old nobility first-years were ruined immediately before a judging, leaving Carneston House the winners. Foul play was suspected, and I found it hard to take joy in the victory. My construction of a suspension bridge had been, I felt, so superior that we would have been assured the win without the sabotage. It was very difficult to write my letter to my uncle that night, for I felt that I had to be honest in stating my suspicions of my own fellows.

  At about that time, I had a final encounter with Cadet Lieutenant Tiber. Rumors about him had died down at the Academy. I had heard little about him and seen even less. Thus I was a bit surprised to encounter him one evening as I returned from the library to Carneston House. We were both bundled in our greatcoats as we approached one another in the semidarkness. He walked with a marked lurch to his gait now, probably as the result of his still-healing injuries. His head was down, his eyes on the snowy path before him. I was tempted to pretend I didn’t recognize him and simply hurry past him. Instead, as was right, I stepped to the side of the path to give him the way and snapped a salute to him. He returned my salute in passing and kept going. An instant later he rounded on his heel and came back to me. “Cadet Nevare Burvelle. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s my name.”

  Then he let a silence fall. I listened to the wind and felt dread build within me. Then he said, “Thank you for coming forward with those names. I didn’t know who jumped me. When Ordo claimed to have seen me drunk and staggering, I suspected, of course. But your saying Jaris’s name aloud was what made it certain for me.”

  “I should have come forward sooner, sir.”

  He cocked his head at me. “And why didn’t you, Nevare Burvelle? That is something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

  “I wasn’t sure…if it was honorable. To speak suspicions without having any facts. And…” I quickly forced the truth past my lips. “I was afraid they’d take revenge on me.”

  He nodded, unsurprised. Nothing in his face condemned me. “And did they?”

  “In small ways. Nothing I can’t endure.”

  He nodded again, and gave me a small, cold smile. “Thank you for facing up to your fear and coming forward. Don’t think yourself a coward. You could have never mentioned it to your uncle, or when the time came, lied and said you’d seen nothing. I wish I could tell you that you’d be rewarded for it. You won’t. Remember, you were right to be cautious of them. Don’t underestimate them. I did. And now I limp. Don’t forget what we’ve learned.”

  He spoke to me as if I were his friend. His words made me brave. “I trust you are recovering well and that your studies go well?”

  His smile grew stiffer. “I’ve recovered as much as I’m likely to. And my studies have come to an end, Cadet Burvelle. I’ve received my first posting. I’m off to Gettys. As a scout.”

  It was a bad post and a worse assignment. We stood facing one another in the cold. There was no polite congratulation I could offer. “It’s a punishment, isn’t it?” I finally asked hopelessly.

  “It is and it isn’t. They need me there. The building of the King’s Road has come to a virtual halt there and I’m to move among the Specks in their forest and find out why. Ostensibly, I’m well suited for the task. Good at languages, good at engineering. I should be able to scout out the best
route for the road and make friends with the wild people. Maybe I’ll find out why we can’t seem to make any forward progress. Everyone gets something they want out of it. I get work I like and I’m good at. The administration gets me out of the way and in a position where I can never hope to rise to any appreciable rank.”

  I found I was nodding to his words. They made sense. Reluctantly, I told him, “Earlier this year, Captain Maw said I’d make a good scout.”

  “Did he? Then I expect you will. He said the same thing to me when I was a first-year.”

  “But I don’t want to be a scout!” The words burst from me. I was horrified at his prophecy.

  “I doubt that anyone does, Nevare. When the time comes, try to recognize that Maw means well by intervening in that way. He’d rather see promising cadets serve in some capacity of worth, rather than being culled or sent to useless posts to count blankets or buy mutton for the troops. It’s his way of saying you’re worth something, even if you are a battle lord’s son.”

  The silence that followed his words hung between us. Finally, he broke it, saying, “Wish me luck, Burvelle.”

  “Good luck, Lieutenant Tiber.”

  “Scout Tiber, Burvelle. Scout Tiber. I’d best get used to it.” He saluted me and I returned it. Then he walked away from me into the cold and the dark. I stood still, shivering, and wondered if I was doomed to follow in his footsteps.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ACCUSATIONS

  Winter deepened and we drew ever closer to Dark Evening. At my father’s house in Widevale, Dark Evening had been a night for prayers and meditation and floating candles on the pond or the river, followed by a celebration the next morning of the lengthening of the days. My mother had always given each of us a small but useful gift in celebration of the turning of the year, to which my father added a yellow envelope containing spending money. It had been a minor but pleasant holiday each year.

  Thus I was astonished to hear my fellows speak of Dark Evening with enthusiasm and anticipation as it drew near. The Academy itself would offer a feast to us on Dark Evening’s Eve, followed by two days of liberty for all cadets in good standing. There were also plays in the playhouses, and the king and queen gave a grand ball in Sondringham Hall in Old Thares, to which the senior cadets were invited. For the younger cadets, there would be carnival and street performers and dancing in the guildhalls. We were sternly admonished that we could attend such events only in uniform, and thus must be on our best behavior, not just for our own reputations, but also for the honor of the Academy. I looked forward to it as something I’d never experienced before.

  Caleb was shocked to hear that I knew so little of Dark Evening. I thought he was teasing me when they told me that on Dark Evening all whores went masked and gave away their favors for free, and that some ladies of good houses sneaked out into the streets on that night, and pretended to be women of pleasure so that they might sample the favors of strange men without danger to their reputations. When I challenged the truth of this, he showed me several lewdly illustrated stories in some of his cheap folios of adventure tales. Despite my better judgment, I read the accounts of women seduced by one wild night in the city and thought them as appalling as they were unlikely. What sane woman would leave her safe and comfortable home simply to indulge in one night of licentiousness?

  Privately, I asked Natred and Kort if they had ever heard such a thing. To my surprise, they assured me that they had. Natred said that his older cousins had told him of it. Kort added that his father said it was a vestige of one of the old gods’ celebrations. “It’s mostly a western custom. The temples of the old gods are still standing in a lot of the older cities, and people remember a lot more about those gods and their customs. Especially the celebrations they had. Dark Evening used to belong to a women’s god. That was what I heard. My mother used to tell stories about Dark Evening to my sisters. Not about running around acting like a whore, but old tales, of girls meeting masked gods at Dark Evening celebrations, and being granted gifts by them, like spinning straw into gold or being able to dance two inches above the floor. Just pretty stories.

  “Then one year my father caught my three sisters dancing in the dark in the garden in just their knickers. He was very upset about it, but my mother asked him what harm could it do, so long as there were no young men about. He said it was the idea of it, and forbade them to ever do such a thing again. But”—and Kort leaned closer to us, as if fearing that someone else might hear—“I think they still keep the holiday that way.”

  “Even my Talerin?” Natred asked intently. I could not tell if he was scandalized or delighted.

  “I do not know for sure,” Kort cautioned him. “But I have heard that many women have rituals and rites of their own for Dark Evening. Sometimes I think that there is much about our women that we do not know.”

  Such talk made me wonder about my own Carsina. For an instant I imagined Carsina dancing near naked in a darkened garden. Would she? I suddenly did not know if I hoped she did or didn’t. Were there rites and rituals that women observed and we men knew nothing about? Were they all in the service of the good god or did women secretly still worship at some of the old altars? Such questions whetted my curiosity for Dark Evening in Old Thares. To be turned loose in the great old city with my fellows, a man among men on a wild festival night, was something I had never imagined. I counted up my allowance that I had hoarded and felt that the holiday would never come.

  In the middle of that week, what began as a good-natured snowball fight with the old nobility first-years from Drakes Hall turned into a nasty pitched battle, with ice and rocks replacing the earlier missiles. I had been at the library, and only learned of it through Rory’s retelling when our patrol gathered at the study table that night. Rory had a black eye and Kort a swollen lip to show for it. The skirmish had dissolved when several older cadet officers had come upon the scene. Even so, Rory was rejoicing over making an antagonist “bleed some of that fine old blood out of his fine old nose.” Trist had also been a participant, as had Caleb. Oron had only witnessed it and yet seemed more upset than Rory. Twice he said aloud, “I just don’t understand it. We are all cadets here. What could have made them hate us so suddenly?”

  The second time he said it, Gord shut his book with a sigh. “Don’t any of you read the newspapers?” he asked, and did not wait for the reply before adding, “The Council of Lords just voted about taxation for the King’s Road. The old nobles opposed it, arguing that they need their moneys for roads and improvements in their own territories rather than ‘the road to nowhere,’ as Lord Jarfries called it. The old nobility had expected to easily defeat the proposal to channel a portion of their tax income to King Troven’s coffers for the road. I even read that some of them laughed aloud when a new noble named Lord Simem first proposed it. Yet when the ballots were counted, three times and no less, the vote was in favor of taxation for the King’s Road.”

  He said this as if it were of immense importance. We all stared at him silently. “Puppies!” he said at last in disgust. “Think about what it means. It means that enough old nobles crossed the line to vote with the new nobles, secretly, that the king is regaining a stronger hand in the country. The old nobles who thought that power was coming slowly but surely into their hands have suffered a major setback. They resent it, and because of it, they and their sons resent us all the more. They thought they were on the path to running this country, with the king as little more than a figurehead. But for our fathers, it would have come true. The old nobility would have continued a slow march upon the monarchy, taking more power and control for themselves, retaining more taxes, building more wealth…Don’t any of you see what I’m talking about?” Sudden frustration broke in his voice.

  “The good god put King Troven over all of us, to rule us justly and well. All of the Holy Writ tells us that the lords should serve their king as a good son serves his father, in obedience, respect, and gratitude for his guidance.” Oron said this so solem
nly that I nearly bowed my head and signed the air with the good god’s sign. He sounded more like a bessom at that moment than Gord ever had.

  Gord snorted. “Yes. So we have all been brought up to believe, every soldier son of us, every son of a new noble father. But what do you think the old nobles have told their first sons and their soldier sons? Do you think they have been taught their first duty is to the king, or to their own noble fathers?”

  “Treason and heresy!” Caleb said angrily. He pointed a finger at Gord accusingly and said, “Why do you say such things?”

  “I don’t! I serve the king as willingly as any man here. I only say that perhaps we have been brought up not to question, and as a result, you do not understand those who do question. You do not see how our loyalty might offend those who are not so blindly loyal themselves.”

  “Blindly loyal!” Rory was incensed. “What’s blind about knowing that we owe the king our loyalty? What is blind about knowing our duty?”

  Gord sat back in his chair. Something hardened in his face. He had changed in the last couple of weeks, in a way I could not clearly define. He was still as fat; he still sweated through drill and panted with the effort of heaving his bulk up the stairs. But somehow there seemed to be something of steel in him now. When he had first joined us, he had laughed along with his mockers when people made jokes about his weight, and sometimes even made fun of himself. Now he kept silent and merely stared at those who baited him. It seemed to make some of the fellows angry, as if he had no right to stand on his dignity and refuse to accept their mockery as his due. Now he looked round the table at those of us gathered there, and I suddenly perceived that it was not just math he was good at. There was more intellect behind those piggy little eyes than I had credited him with. He licked his plump lips, as if deciding whether to speak or not. Then the words seemed to break forth from him, not in a torrent, but in a deliberate cascade of derision.