by Robin Hobb
I sighed. “I’m happy for those who will now recover and regain their lives. But I have to confess, I’m thinking about fellows who won’t. Nate, for instance. Trent and Caleb. Oron.”
“Think, too, of those who won’t die because of it,” she counseled me solemnly. Then she grinned rather impishly and added, “And you might say that you rejoice in the change in the Kester family fortune. The demand for the water is incredible; people are using it as a tonic for all sorts of ills now, and several very wealthy families have made the trek to visit the spring itself and bathe in it. Lady Kester has hired workmen to build a spa there, with separate baths for ladies and gentlemen, and a hotel. Oh, it will be rustic at first, but the letter from Spink’s sister says that will be part of the charm. She complains that they never have enough bottles for the water, and that they must find a new supplier for them. And she also says that, thanks to the water, she has an offer for her hand. You may know him? He’s a friend of Spink’s. Rory Hart, soldier son of Lord and Lady Hart of Roundhills?”
“Rory? From the Academy? But he never got sick from the plague at all.”
“Perhaps not, but his younger brothers did. And his mother took them to Bitter Springs, where they recovered, and she met Spink’s family and pronounced them delightful. She says that Spink’s sister Gera is exactly the practical sort of girl that Rory needs to settle him down and keep him in order.”
“I don’t know who to feel sorry for, Rory or Gera,” I said, and Epiny cuffed me lightly.
“Neither one. Spink says he actually thinks they will be well suited to each other, when they meet.”
I shook my head, unwilling to imagine a girl who could settle Rory down and keep him in order. I wondered if she carried a club with her at all times. To Epiny I said, “It is almost frightening how fast everything seems to have changed. The world has gone on without me while I was away. I wonder how I will find a place in it again.” At that moment, it did not seem impossible that I should do just that.
“You are as much at fault as anyone for these changes. Without you, how many of them would have come about?” She halted, then added reassuringly, “And some parts of the world have not changed that much. Some parts still wait for you.” She smiled teasingly.
I quickly changed the subject. “You have told me all about my family and your parents and Spink’s family, but not mentioned a word about Spink and yourself. From what Kesey tells me, the regiment has been divided, and only a company of it remains here. What does Spink think of that?”
Her smile faded a bit, but determination came into her eyes. “It is not the best post he might have. He knew that when he accepted the commission. But Spink says we will make the best of it. With the depletion of officers here in Gettys, he sees an opportunity to rise in the ranks. There are rumors that we will soon receive new troops to bring us up to strength. Or that perhaps the rest of the regiment will be called back to the Midlands and some other regiment replace us here. It’s uncertain right now. Spink says that the King has much on his mind, with the gold discovery and a new treaty with the Landsingers. There has not been a formal decision to abandon the road, though Spink thinks that is what it will come to. Spink has told me that this is the lot of a soldier, regardless of his rank. Often he simply has to remain where he is and await new commands.” She gave a small sigh. “I confess, I would love to be almost anywhere else but here. Even without the magic soaking us with fear or despair, Gettys is a gloomy, primitive place. Sometimes it is hard to read the letters that come; it does seem as if everyone else’s lives have gone on, but I am trapped here, with the same work and worries, day after day.”
“The lot of a cavalla wife,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” she replied briskly. She took a breath and squared her shoulders. “And that is what I took upon myself when I married Spink. I know that. And I intend to make the best of it.”
She hesitated at the door to the cabin, and then turned to me, blushing prettily. “Would you—that is, could you ask Kesey to join you outside so that I could be alone with my baby for a time?”
“Of course,” I assured her.
Kesey surprised me by quickly deducing that Epiny needed to be alone to nurse her child. I didn’t have to spell it out for him, and he even made the excuse that we needed to fetch more water as I’d emptied the cask with all my “scrubbing round.” We each took a bucket as we left the cabin.
“So,” Kesey asked me curiously. “What are you going to do? You going to go into town with the Lieutenant’s wife?”
“Not now. Not like this.” I gestured down at my bizarre garb.
Kesey sniffed thoughtfully. “Your old stuff is still around, but it’s not going to fit you. One of my shirts might fit you. But not the trousers. Funny. You’re a lot taller than I thought. You seemed shorter when you were fat.”
“Taller and younger. Not a bad trade,” I said, and we both laughed. Then a silence fell between us, a silence filled with nothing to say and too much to say.
“Thank you,” I said at last.
“For a shirt? No need to thank me. It probably won’t even be all that clean.”
“No, thank you for everything. For thinking well of me when most people didn’t. For being willing to make me a part of the regiment.”
He made another deprecatory noise. “Wonder if we even are a regiment anymore, the way we’re getting spread out.”
“It’s like you told me before, Kesey. When things are down for a regiment is when the real soldiers hold their heads up and try harder.”
“Does that mean you’re going to come back to soldiering? Clear your name and put your uniform back on?”
“I’d like to,” I said, and my own words surprised me.
“Well then, I think—” he began, but at the same moment, we both turned toward the road that wound up the hill to the cemetery. A horse was coming, ridden hard, the rider low on his back, urging more speed out of him. We both recognized the rider at the same time. “I think Lieutenant Kester is mighty glad to hear that you’re back!” Kesey observed with a grin.
I had to smile, too, and then I went to meet Spink. I watched him come, an excellent rider on a mediocre mount. He was small and slight as ever, still looking more boy than man. When he drew in his horse just a few feet away from me, I was surprised. “A moustache? Epiny didn’t warn me to expect a moustache.” It looked good on him, but I wasn’t about to concede that to him without some mocking first.
He did not smile at my jest. He took a breath. “Nevare. I am so glad to see you.” He drew in another deep breath. “Amzil has been arrested. For murder.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LIVES IN THE BALANCE
There, I thought to myself in some strange corner of my mind. There it is. The tragedy that denies all the good news I’ve heard today. The magic takes a final slap at me, for bending it to my will. Or the balancing point for Orandula, damn him! He threatened to bring my life into balance.
Then Spink was off his horse. He embraced me roughly, saying, “Sorry, brother. That’s a terrible way to greet you after you’ve been gone so long and endured so much. But the news had been burning a hole in me every second of the ride from town.” He glanced around us. “Where’s Epiny?”
“She’s in the cabin, feeding the baby.” My voice shook. I felt I couldn’t get a breath. My fault. Somehow it was all my fault. If I hadn’t used the magic to grow the garden for her, if I hadn’t supplied her so well with meat before I left her…If I hadn’t cared about her, and wanted to stay with her when the magic wanted me to move on…But I’d done all the damn magic asked of me; it had won and had its way with my life. Why did she and I have to be punished by it now?
Spink took off his gloves and wiped sweat and dust from his face. “I won’t interrupt Solina’s feeding with this sort of news. It will keep for a few minutes longer. So you’re back?” He forced gladness into his voice. He stepped back and looked me up and down. “You look like yourself again, like the Nevare from the Academy d
ays. What happened? How are you here? And what are you wearing?”
“A cut-up cloak. It was all I had. Spink, it’s a long story, and I’d rather hear yours first. How can Amzil be charged with murder?”
“They say she killed a man in Dead Town, and hid his body. It’s probably why she came to Gettys, to hide from her crime.”
I knew it was, but I kept silent on that. “Who accused her?” I asked.
“The murdered man’s wife. She had evidently taken to whoring for the soldiers after her husband was murdered. Since Captain Thayer drove the other whores out of Gettys, a lot of the fellows have been making the trip to Dead Town to see her. Somehow the Captain got wind of her trade with the troops, and sent men out there to arrest her. Captain Thayer’s determined there will be no whores in Gettys, and I suppose he’s decided to extend that to Dead Town, though that seems to me like a big stretch of his authority. He told the patrol to bring the woman and any troopers visiting her back to Gettys. The patrol returned today with their prisoners. That was why Thayer called out the other officers today. He wanted us to witness their summary punishment.”
He paused and drew breath, then glanced at Kesey. “Trooper, do you have any water? My throat is as dry as the road.”
Kesey shook his head. “Only in the cabin where your missus is. Unless you want to walk back to the spring. Or I could go fetch you some.” He glanced down at the bucket in his hand.
“Would you? I’d appreciate it.”
Kesey hurried off with his bucket. Spink and I walked the rest of the way up the hill. There was water in the animal trough, and he let his horse have some. We walked over to the cart and he sat down on the tail of it.
“So what happened?” I demanded impatiently.
Spink shook his head in disgust. “Thayer decided to flog all three of them, the woman as well as the two men. He gave us a long lecture about how we had failed as officers if our men could behave in such a beastly fashion. Thayer has been…strange since that night, the night you left town. And recently he’s become even stranger. From hints he has dropped, in his lectures and his Sixday sermons, I think he knows now that Carsina lied to him, that really you had been her fiancé. I think it is devouring him, from the inside. In his own mind, he’d made a saint out of Carsina. He justified everything about that night on the basis of her innocence. And when he found out she had deceived him and lied about you, I think it swung him in a different direction. The man hates to look at me now. When I report to him, he stares at the wall. He’s so full of guilt about what he did that he now tries to be perfect every moment.
“I wouldn’t talk like this about a fellow officer in front of Kesey, but I just don’t think the Captain is right in his mind anymore. I think it is why he was left behind here with the rest of the dregs. At one time, he could have been a good officer, but now.” Spink shook his head. “At a time when the fear and despair that once overwhelmed us are gone, he seems intent on crushing the spirit out of the men. He has been organized. I’ll give him that. The few men that are left, he drives. The maintenance of the fort and buildings are far better than they were, yet such tasks feel like busywork to the men. They mutter that there is little reason to rebuild barracks that will remain empty, or repair streets that carry hardly any traffic. He gives them no praise or pride in doing their work, only lectures on how it is a soldier’s duty to obey and not question.”
I broke into his long explanation with a question. “The dregs? What do you mean, the dregs left behind?”
He gave a small sigh. “Anyone with any connections left here with the rest of the regiment when they rode out. They left behind, well, the undesirable elements. The men who were lazy, troublesome, or stupid. The ones in poor health. The old soldiers. The scouts because they know this area, and everyone knows you can’t really bring a scout back to civilization. The officers who don’t behave like officers.”
He halted, folded his lips. My eyes searched his as I asked the horrible question. “Why you, then?”
He gave the tiniest of shrugs and then admitted, “Epiny’s forthrightness does not always endear her to people. Some find it irritating. Some officers feel it reflects badly on a lieutenant if he cannot or will not control his wife. Colonel Haren used to refer to her as a thorn in his flesh, more than once, when we were speaking. More often, he simply didn’t speak to me any more than he could help it.”
“Oh, good god, Spink. That’s so unfair.”
A smile twisted his mouth. “It is what it is. I married her because she was what I wanted with all my heart. I’m in this regiment because it was what was offered to me. I don’t confuse the one kind of commitment with the other. But”—and he sighed more deeply—“I know that Captain Thayer finds her behavior reprehensible. He has spoken to me privately about her twice now.”
“He’d never have survived being married to Carsina for long, then—” I stopped, wondering if I profaned the dead.
But Spink barked a short laugh. “From what little I knew of her, you are right. If she had lived, he’d be a different man. Good god, we all would, wouldn’t we? But she didn’t. And here we are. Her death and her deception of him have soured the man.
“He denies himself anything that might be remotely sinful or even pleasurable. Well, that’s his own business, but now he’s taken it beyond himself, trying to restrict the men and telling the officers how we ought to live to provide a ‘good example’ to the troops. Driving the whores out of town was extreme enough, but now he’s suggesting things like unaccompanied women should stay off the streets in the evenings and on Sixday. He wants to make attendance at the Sixday services mandatory for everyone who lives inside the fort, and to forbid the troops from going to the town businesses on Sixday.”
“I’ll wager that Epiny doesn’t agree to that.”
“At first, when he was tightening the rules on the men’s behavior, she thought she finally had a commander listening to her concerns about women’s safety on the streets. He’s only become this extreme in the last few weeks, Nevare. I don’t think anyone realizes he means for us to live like this forever.
“He called in all the officers today, to witness him dispensing his justice. The men took their stripes—fifteen each. It just about made me sick to watch. When he got to the woman, some of us objected. I was one of them. The men were soldiers and subject to his rules, I told him, but the woman wasn’t. Thayer wasn’t listening to us, but then the woman said it wasn’t her fault she was a whore, it was the only way she could make a living after her husband was murdered by Amzil.”
He gave me a sideways glance, but I still said nothing. He went on. “That made Captain Thayer sit up and take notice. Amzil has never tried to avoid him since that night; I’d almost say she goes out of her way to put herself in front of him. She addresses him every chance she gets: ‘Are you having a good day, Captain Thayer? Pleasant weather, isn’t it, Captain Thayer?’ She’s a mirror of his guilt, a living and very present reminder of a night when he was neither an officer nor a gentleman. And this widow gave him the perfect reason to be rid of her. He immediately sent two men out to look for Amzil and to bring her to confront her accuser. Everyone knows that she works for me, so they went first to my house. Thank the good god that the Captain had allowed me to go with them; I had told him I didn’t want strange men barging into my house and alarming my delicate wife.”
He paused and we exchanged a look. I suspected the men would have been more alarmed than Epiny. “Amzil wasn’t there, but Epiny’s note was. I scooped it up before anyone else saw it. I called in a neighbor’s housekeeper, one of Epiny’s whistle brigade, to keep an eye on the children for me. We were headed back to headquarters when we encountered Amzil, coming back from market. The men arrested her and took her immediately to Captain Thayer.” His words halted and I knew he didn’t wish to elaborate.
“And then you came here?”
“No! I longed to, but knew that I could not leave Amzil to face him alone.” He looked aside from
me. “I did what I could to protect her, Nevare, but she didn’t make it easy. I came with those men, almost like I was leading them to her.” Then his eyes came up to meet mine. “I tried to tell her to be calm. She wouldn’t listen to me. I gave her what protection I could. It wasn’t enough.”
I suddenly felt cold and my ears rang. “What do you mean?” I asked faintly.
“She fought them. They had to drag her. She was kicking and fighting and spitting, screaming to everyone on the street that Thayer was finally going to kill her and rape her like he’d threatened to do. I’ve never seen a woman act like that; it was more like watching a cornered wildcat. Fear, but plenty of hatred, too. As soon as they had her in the Captain’s office, the woman accused her. ‘She’s the one, she killed my husband, and buried him in one of the old buildings in Dead Town. I know she done it, ’cause I sent him out to beg some food of her, when she had plenty and we had nothing. And she killed him and run off. Took me weeks to find his grave. My poor, dear husband. All he wanted was food.’ And the widow broke down in tears.”
“Did Amzil deny it?”
“She wouldn’t say a word. And that other woman sat there, rocking and crying and moaning from time to time, and the Captain started questioning Amzil. ‘Did you do it? Did you kill this woman’s husband?’ And instead of answering him, she started firing questions back at him: ‘Did you strike an unarmed man while others held him for you? Did you keep silent when troops under your command said they would rape me in front of the man I loved? Did you yourself suggest that you would rape me after I was dead, as vengeance on the man you intended to murder?’ For every question he asked her, she asked him a worse one. I think she knew she was facing death and was determined to cut him as deep as she could on the way. In front of every officer in his command, she accused him of those things.”
I couldn’t find breath to ask him what had happened. His repetition of her words “in front of the man I loved” had burned into me like acid.
