Aedan had been moving to assist Hadley, but he changed direction. He grabbed Hadley’s fallen sword, ran at the thug, drew his attention with a yell, and hurled the sword at him.
The man jumped aside and faced Aedan, forgetting the other two for only an instant.
Vayle’s staff descended on his head, followed by Lorrimer’s and then Vayle’s again. He sagged like a collapsed tent.
“Quickly,” Aedan shouted, as he rushed back to Hadley who looked unnaturally still. “Tie them up. Cut ropes from the stalls.”
Hadley was breathing in shallow gasps, there was a lot of blood on his face, and one eye looked wrong. Ilona left Malik propped against the cart wheel and rushed over. Aedan caught his breath as he saw the red film over the lower part of her neck.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s not deep,” she said. “He only cut the skin.” She began to look over Hadley, prodding with the greatest of care, and soon found the painful area between his ribs. She lifted his shirt to reveal an ugly-looking gash.
Aedan thought his friend was done for and turned away with a groan.
“Don’t worry, Aedan,” Ilona said. “It didn’t reach the lungs. No bubbles in the wound. No coughing blood. You just need to help me put on a bandage for now.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” She smiled.
“How is Liru?” he asked, looking to where Delwyn was nursing her.
“Broken arm, I think. Maybe shoulder too. She was hit very hard. And they enjoyed it.” Her eyes spilled over, and Aedan’s fists clenched. “What kind of people do that?” she said.
“People that belong in prison or worse.”
She finished with the bandages and looked up. “Thank you, Aedan. I know it was you. We’ve all heard about your ways with strategy.”
Aedan turned his eyes down, embarrassed.
“I have been horrible to you for a bad reason,” she continued. “When you and Peashot took the last places in that endurance trial, it was Malik’s best friend who lost out. I hated you for it. But he couldn’t have done what you did here. And he would never have done what you did for my grandparents. I’m glad now that you beat him, just don’t tell Malik I said that. Malik spent a year training him.”
Something of Malik’s hatred began to draw into focus. But then everything in Aedan’s mind went into a wild blur as the dazzling girl leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.
Peashot and Kian jumped down. Kian’s face was half bloodied by a deep scratch. A rock had been returned to him with a powerful arm. As they joined the others and helped to cut ropes, one of the gangsters began staggering to his feet. Peashot rushed at him with a wild scream and planted a knee in the man’s face. The gangster fell and so did Peashot, clutching his knee and shouting a string of words that would have put any of the thugs to shame.
The tramp of boots announced a regiment of soldiers. They had heard the noise and come to inspect. Coren, who was still recovering from the shock, gave them the details. The whole gang was chained and removed to the city prison.
All but one.
Aedan noticed with a rush of dismay that the man who had wrestled his staff from him was not in the final number. And that man would tell Clauman what had happened.
Hadley spent three weeks in a dangerous fever and the vision in his right eye was blurry for months afterwards. Mistress Gilda said he was very lucky to still have the eye at all. Vayle had been stabbed in his leg. He limped for weeks. Liru and Malik both had broken bones which had to be set, and the rest of the group escaped with bruises and cuts. The gang was jailed with no chance of release for many years.
News of the rescue spread through the academy, drawing a bewildering amount of attention. Envious classmates were thoroughly impressed with the injuries the boys now sported, particularly Hadley’s and Malik’s.
Peashot was mad that he had gained nothing more than a bruised knee.
The group told and retold the story, expanding a detail here and there, until it sounded like they had conquered an army of ogres. They remembered clearly what moves they had done, and the explaining was always accompanied by swinging arms and explosive noises – with a good measure of argument over who hit whom and when. They had the decency, however, to forget that after the encounter Lorrimer had found himself a quiet spot and indulged in a brief cry.
The whole business was something at which the girls might have rolled their eyes and raised their noses, dismissing it all as boyish imaginings. But Ilona and Liru, two of their own, had been present. So, instead, they fussed over the conquerors, Hadley in particular, calling them brave and honourable until the boys who had missed out became quite miserable and sick of it all.
Malik never once commented on the fight. He fell completely silent whenever the topic was raised. His taunting of Aedan came to an end, but there was no doubt that the cold anger in his eyes grew colder and fiercer. It was as if Aedan had offered insult by rescuing Malik’s family.
The masters were all very pleased with the boys, and Matron Rosalie scolded them for being reckless. They managed to find favour with her again when they arranged for Enna to prepare a stew in the hostel kitchen. Enna was immediately given a job and Peashot an appetite.
Dun used the encounter with the gang as an exercise in strategy. He recreated the environment in the training hall where many variations were discussed and played out.
The general feeling was one of pride, but it was one in which Aedan could only partly share. Both Peashot and Hadley asked him about the bruises he had sustained before the fight, and how he had known the attack would happen, but he wouldn’t talk of it, and they let him be.
One evening, Aedan crept out of bed, opened a secret cubby in his desk and withdrew a tattered page. He clutched it and made his way to the kitchens where coals would still be glowing in the oven.
For a long time he stood with the folded page in his hand, thinking, remembering. He counted the beatings – three in the north, one on the journey, one that Harriet had interrupted, and the last one. Something had changed, broken in him during that last beating. Though it was one of the mildest, it had been different. Before, he had been thrashed for something he had done, but the last time it had seemed he was being thrashed for who he was.
In him, there had been a secret longing to reunite with his father, and it had been chased away, bleeding. Clauman would not be collecting him from the academy to work with him. There would be no father-and-son togetherness.
Never again.
That bubbling cauldron of remembered injuries and fermented hate slid forward from the dark inner chamber and began to tip again.
He could not use his fists, but there was a better weapon. From now on he would know his father no more. Clauman would be a stranger to him. Aedan would be deaf to his words and blind to his face. His father was dead.
He looked at the page, considered opening and reading it one last time, then decided against it. He knew what it said, every word. None of it meant anything to him now. With a flick of the wrist, he spun it into the coals. It perched there for some time before beginning to blacken and smoulder. Finally it burst into flames.
To watch it flake and crumble hurt more than he had expected, but he did not try to rescue the page. He stayed until it had disintegrated, and wondered if little Dara would understand, for it was she who had written out the words with such care.
In the weeks that followed, Aedan took to long periods of brooding. Part of him wanted to wander out and chance upon his father that he might unleash his bitterness and completely ignore the man in the most obvious way possible, but another part of him was afraid.
His father had warned him that revenge would be severe if he meddled with the robbery. And he had meddled. It was difficult to know if the threat was real, and it hung over him like an axe suspended from the roof beams by a ragged string.
“Aedan, must you get mud all over the floor?”
Hadley was the only one in the dorm with
any notion of orderliness. His notion was unanimously disregarded.
“Just sharing,” Aedan mumbled as he passed Hadley’s section on the way to the little washing cubicle.
He got a lot of mud off, and a lot remained. This was fairly normal. On the way back he left samples of deep brown and wild ochre with every step.
The others were in bed. He passed their alcoves one by one and noted the familiar scenes. Hadley looked down at the mud stains and shook his head; Vayle was lost in a book, probably some abstract and philosophical tosh like the meaning of meaning, far beneath the notice of any normal boy; Lorrimer was crouched over a page, lips and pen moving together, obviously composing another poem; and Peashot was lying on his back adding a gravestone to his collection scratched in the wall.
“You miss curfew every rest day,” Peashot noted, his voice carrying round the log partition as Aedan dropped onto his bed. “How come you don’t have any charges?”
“Who says they know?”
“Well how do you get back through the gates?”
“I don’t. I climb the wall.”
“Are you mad? It’s high enough to break both your legs if you fall. And the grips are tiny.”
“Been good for my climbing.”
“Slipping won’t.”
Aedan grunted.
“You’re not still taking the shortcut back through the law wing are you?”
“Of course.”
“Didn’t you hear what happened to Kian and Warton? They got caught by that Iver everyone’s been warning us about. When he finished with them Warton was actually crying – least, that’s what Cayde said. Those older law students are bad news and this Iver is a champion street brawler.”
“So? Why should that scare me?”
“He’s at least nineteen, and huge. What are you? Thirteen?”
“Almost fourteen. I’m not walking around just because they want it to themselves. Slipping through the law-wing boulevard cuts off a quarter of a mile. Anyway, these flabby law students would have to catch me first.”
Peashot made a rude sound. “One day you’re going to get snagged. You’re always snooping around anywhere that’s forbidden or dangerous. Where’d you go today? Some wild and lonely spot again?”
“The oak and hawthorn section of the forest.”
“You mean the dark and eerie section.”
“I don’t think it’s eerie. And don’t give me the Fenn-scout lecture. I always take sword, knife and bow, and anyway, the scouts would have no reason to go into those areas.”
“Master Dunn would skin you if he found out you were wandering there alone. But you’re probably right. No scout with half a brain would go into that area. I’ve only seen it from the hill. Don’t even know how you get in past the brambles. Sometimes I think you’re like one of those tracker mongooses – still half wild.”
“He’s more than half wild,” Vayle observed, his voice floating down the room. “Have you seen the way he moves when we’re in the forests? Doesn’t make me think of a mongoose. More like a marsh eel in muddy water. I heard that not even Wildemar could find him during the last survival challenge. Probably found another one of those inaccessible spots. If you ask me, I’d say he goes there to sing.”
Aedan shook his head. “Vayle thinks I can’t sing,” he explained.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Vayle said. “It’s just that you sing worse than anyone I’ve ever heard before.”
Aedan threw a wet sock over the partition with just enough weight to travel two cubicles and land in Vayle’s. It produced a suitable reaction of disgust.
“You always take that leather case that you hang around your neck,” said Peashot. “You guard that thing like it’s full of gold and rubies. Aren’t you ever going to tell us what’s inside?”
“Touch it and I’ll kill you.”
Peashot chuckled. “So what’s the real reason for your gloomy wandering?” he asked. “Why do you like those kinds of places?”
“Why do you always draw gravestones?”
Peashot didn’t answer.
“Maybe it’s the quiet,” Aedan resumed. “Let’s me think, or maybe it’s the opposite of normal thinking, more like untangling. I’m comfortable in those spots.”
“Suits your mood lately – somewhere between angry and sulky. You’ve been different since the festival.”
Aedan didn’t want to explain.
Hadley walked up and leaned against the rough log partition. “It’s not Liru’s influence, is it?”
“What do you mean?” Aedan asked, bristling.
“She is Mardrae.” Hadley was the only one in the group who hadn’t warmed to Liru. It was rooted in the one unfortunate trait he shared with Malik – a distrust of those from far-off nations.
“So?”
“Well, doesn’t it bother you? There’s foreign and there’s foreign. Kian’s alright – Orunean folk aren’t much different to us, but these Mardrae are very foreign. You don’t think she could be changing you?”
“You say Mardrae like it’s a disease, like any change she caused would be bad.”
“Some people here think it is. Many people, actually. They say if her father wasn’t rich, they wouldn’t have let her into the academy.”
“And you think they shouldn’t have.”
“No. I don’t really care. Just saying that she’s maybe bringing you down with her foreign ways of thinking.”
Aedan was getting annoyed, partly because of the prying, partly because of the way Liru was being discussed. “She has nothing to do with that,” he said, more abruptly than he’d intended. “It’s something else on my mind … something … different. And even if she is foreign, life is tough for her in Castath. I’m not going to make it worse by keeping away like every other bigot.”
But as he thought about it, he realised it was not generosity behind his loyalty, as his words implied. It was that he cherished her company. Liru never made him feel ashamed. He drew as much from her friendship as she from his.
“Well, whatever,” said Hadley. “I thought I’d just mention that she’s very foreign and strange. And stern. Weirdly stern. Maybe someone more lively would be good company now.”
Aedan clamped his teeth. So what if she was different? It was time to change the subject. “Well, it’s not like Peashot’s been any brighter since he twisted his stupid ankle,” he said.
Vayle made an explosive sound from his alcove, but said nothing more.
“And anyway,” Aedan continued, “with all the time you spend with Rillette, soon you are going to start agreeing with all that talk about storms bringing monsters and death and the end of the world.”
“Rillette’s not stupid, and how do you know that the talk isn’t true?”
“I passed through DinEilan, remember. That’s where all the rumours point. I never saw anything like what the people are saying.”
Aedan wasn’t entirely sure he believed his own words, but it felt a lot safer to mock strange claims than support them. As a cynic he couldn’t be pulled down; a cynic was already down.
“Well,” said Hadley, “I think we are heading for some eerie changes. A few weeks back, this group of people from a hamlet called Eastridge saw something fly overhead that was too big for a bird. And no, it wasn’t a cloud. Whatever’s happening, it’s coming closer.”
“Is this the point when you usually put your arm around Rillette?” Aedan asked.
Peashot laughed.
Hadley grinned and took it with his usual good humour.
“Oh Hadley,” Peashot squeaked in his most Rillette-like voice, “You make me feel so safe the way you pretend to believe all my rubbish so you can hold me in those enormous muscly arms with your sleeves rolled so high and your chin stuck out fearlessly at the dragons and ghouls and – Ouch!”
Hadley landed a few more good blows that stopped the mockery, but he was unable to silence the laughter.
“She’s never mentioned anything about dragons or ghouls
,” he said, trying in vain to present a serious defence to his laughing opponents. “The other stuff is real. Even Lorrimer agrees.”
“What do you mean ‘even Lorrimer’?” Peashot cried. “He still believes in that nursery rhyme about foot-biter faeries. That’s why he always puts his boots on when he has to make a dark trip to the privy.” There was no retort from Lorrimer. “What’s he doing?”
“What do you think?” Hadley said. His eyes rolled with the words, but then they focussed and glinted with that familiar headlong enthusiasm. “You two hold him down. I’ll snatch the page.” Hadley had been trying without success to get Lorrimer to read one of his many poems – the first thing to which he had turned his fledgling literacy skills – and Hadley was not one to be put off for long.
Aedan and Peashot sauntered past. Lorrimer ignored them until they spun and pounced. By the time he had fought them off, Hadley held the page. It took all three of them to keep the tall boy down while Hadley read in snatches. Aedan managed a peek at the writing, curious as to why Hadley was struggling over the simpler words. The problem was visible at a glance.
Oe daffidilz ar disgusting worts comperd too yoo
Peepil ar blind and schupid if thay cant see its troo
Evrything els has grown uglee now eevin food
Eevin wen its muttin schoo
Beecoz nun of theez ar az pritty az yoo
Peashot had begun to snigger at the first line, Aedan at the second, and by the time the poem was finished, Hadley could read no more. The laughter was so loud that several boys appeared at the door wanting to know its meaning. Hadley was about to read for all, but Aedan seized the page and gave it back to Lorrimer. The look on Lorrimer’s face had told him that the joke had gone far enough.
“Just something Lorrimer wrote,” Hadley informed the visitors. “It was very good.”
“Ah,” said Kian. “Who is he being in love with this month?”
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 42
