Finally Lorrimer emerged, looking haggard. All eyes fastened on his, all asking the same question. He strode quietly towards them, put on a shy smile and nodded.
The lawn erupted in whoops and cheers and congratulations. They all clapped his back, Liru hugged him and Delwyn planted a kiss on his cheek that produced a dramatic change of colour. The princess, it appeared, was losing her hold.
The girls arranged a party at Liru’s house. Her wealthy parents had a mansion large enough to accommodate them all. Another four of her friends would be there, so there would be dancing partners for all.
“And this time you will dance,” she informed Peashot. The small boy was so happy over Lorrimer’s success, which he saw as largely due to his own coaching, that he was prepared to suffer a dance or two.
“As long as I don’t have to dance with someone taller than me.”
“Well I’m shorter than you, so you can dance with me.”
Peashot considered this, stood next to her, and had Aedan measure to confirm the assertion, then nodded his approval.
The party was an explosion of colour and music, and Mardrae hospitality left them all somewhat overwhelmed. Liru’s father, a dark-skinned man with strong arms and piercing eyes, spoke to them individually, expressing his pleasure at being able to host them. He knew the names of everyone who had been involved in the fight, and before leaving them to their celebrations, thanked them for defending, among others, his daughter. Even Hadley, though he remained aloof, seemed impressed by the man.
There was more food than they had ever seen at a private party – and it was all for them. Using a basic sign language Wildemar had taught, Peashot tried to convey cryptic instructions to Lorrimer about stealing some food. He was furious when Liru raised her hands and signed, “Wait … wait … go!” just as the butler turned his back.
Lorrimer acted like he had never seen a sight as beautiful as that heavily laden table. Until Delwyn entered the room – tall, graceful, smiling gently – and then he almost forgot to eat at all.
Peashot found that, with Liru showing him the steps and matching his stroppiness with steel of her own, dancing was actually not so bad. Lorrimer had clearly been practising. He was now able to execute a few of the more complicated moves with a surprising level of control over his gangly legs. Delwyn was enchanted.
No one felt inclined to sleep when the musicians left. The whole group took pillows and blankets and went up onto the roof where they watched stars and told stories and jokes that got progressively thinner. But the foggier the brains and the worse the jokes, the more the laughter. When the sun rose, it warmed them enough to nudge the whole party down to the dorms where they slept until lunch.
It was then that Aedan met Liru’s mother. Even from across the room, he saw the pain of loss etched into her face. Deep gullies divided her brows and shadows lurked beneath hollow eyes. It was a slaver attack, many years ago, in which her eldest daughter had been taken – he had not forgotten what Liru had told him – but in the mother’s eyes the grief was still fresh.
“Already I am in your debt, Aedan,” she said, “and more of you I will not ask. But my Liru has told me that we share wounds from the slavers, and word of your growing skill, it has reached my ears from many mouths. I want you to know that if it ever happens that you are able to strike against the flesh of Lekrau, you will be acting not only for yourself and for Thirna, but for Mardraél too. You will strike for the thousands who have lost and the thousands who fear to lose the ones that they love. And though I have no place to ask it, if you ever find my Yulla for me, you will have the rights of a son in my house. She was the gentlest of souls. The last thing I heard from them as they dragged her away, it was that I should not worry for she would be sold to a respectable brothel.”
Though her eyes had looked drained of every last tear, they flooded again. She turned and hurried from the room.
Aedan slipped away and climbed the stairs to the roof where he sat and gazed out over the rooftops and the distant plains, sombre and still under a deep and endless sky.
“Did she upset you?” It was Hadley.
Peashot and Liru arrived too. They sat down beside Aedan, looking out over the western grassland to the Pellamine ridge.
“Yes,” said Aedan. “But it was a good reminder.” His eyes searched the vast space for a while before he continued. “One day I am going to find Kalry’s grave, and I’ll plant flowers on it – blue rainbells, those were her favourite. If I can, I’ll find Liru’s sister. And then …” he took a deep breath, “then I’m going to give Lekrau something to fear.”
“I know you are,” said Peashot. “Just don’t think you’re going alone.”
Aedan began his second year with a level of determination none of the masters had seen before. The classes were more difficult, the material more extensive, and the new languages, Vinthian and Sulese, were challenging, but he ate through it all like fire in the brushwood.
Several more incursion reports only served to raise his sense of urgency. The Fenn scouting forays were escalating both in frequency and size. And to the west, a Lekran raid near Port Breklee had shaken the locals badly. Over thirty families were taken from an undefended inland town only weeks after their soldiers had been reassigned to fortify patrols around Castath.
Aedan was growing convinced that he would be called to action well before his training was done. As he saw the walls rising up around the city and listened to the ringing of steel from forges that did not sleep, he knew that it was no longer a question of if, but when.
Dun introduced them to the heavier weaponry – war hammers, maces, and flails. As before, he spent a lot of time on footwork and balance, ensuring that missed swings did not turn the apprentices around and expose their backs. He spent no less time on breathing, as heavy weapons tended to result in clamped lungs and rapid exhaustion.
They began to work with siege weapons too – catapults, ballistae, battering rams and even assault towers – studying the use as well as the construction and inherent weaknesses of various designs.
While most of the boys thought primarily of the Fenn, Aedan imagined a Lekran soldier in front of him every time he lifted a mace, and a Lekran ship whenever he aimed the ballista.
There were many practical exercises now. The boys regularly accompanied rangers, senior apprentices and marshals on scouting expeditions. During these they were always heavily armed and took every precaution, always searching for potential Fenn ambushes and never approaching from an exposed position.
One group, which included the boys from Malik’s dorm, became too bold during one of their approaches and paid for it. While riding up to a thicket from which a finger of smoke rose, the lead ranger suddenly coughed and died with a shaft quivering his chest. At the same time, Cayde’s pony staggered and fell, an arrow through its neck. Everyone fled except one of the marshals who dragged Cayde onto the back of his own horse and carried him to safety.
They later said that when the pony went down, men had broken from cover in an obvious attempt to secure a prisoner. The smoke had not been a mistake betraying the Scouts, but a lure. Cayde, along with many of the other boys were more than a little shaken by the incident.
Though Aedan never encountered any of the foreigners, he twice came upon old campsites where Fenn reconnaissance was suspected, and he once discovered a corpse nearby.
The apprentices were also taken to see investigations and arrests within and around the city where they could observe the grey-cloaked marshals exercising some of the skills that had made them legendary. The real work of the grey marshals – the watching of surrounding nations and pre-empting of danger – was something the young apprentices would not observe for many years.
It was during one of the local patrol outings that Aedan decided to ask a favour.
Over the past weeks, suspicion had been growing to a horrible certainty. His father’s threat was turning out to be real. Twice he had caught glimpses of coordinated movement around him.
The first time he had doubled back, sprinted at his supposed follower and dodged past. The second time he had walked right into the trap. Men rose up from dirty corners ahead, and flooded in from behind. They almost caught his feet as he scrambled up a blocky wall and escaped over the roofs. It had been very close.
He was patrolling the same area now with two marshals when the sensation of being tailed crept up on him. After glancing behind, he asked the marshals if they would help him. They agreed and took another route, while Aedan headed on, shadows closing around him.
He appeared at the top of an alleyway a short while later, bolting like a rabbit, with a pack of half-a-dozen club-wielding men close behind. The pursuers were gaining on him. He put on a burst of speed, took the corner, dashed past the two heavily-armed marshals, and turned around to watch the collision.
The gang might as well have tried to run through the city gate – closed. With iron-capped quarterstaves, the marshals struck clubs from numbed hands with beguiling ease. Aedan marvelled. The blows fell with speed and precision, making short work of the six men who were summarily arrested and packed away behind bars for a long respite from their labours.
The gang would provide no information, but Aedan was fairly certain it was his father trying to bring him in. His teeth ground as he considered what he would have done to the man. If only his legs would not buckle under him.
While walking back from the prison, a comment Liru had recently made came to mind. It wasn’t the first time it had returned to haunt him. She had said that the hate that sometimes looked out of his eyes was worrying her, that it would not be good for him.
But who was she to criticise? Of all people, she should have been the one to understand. He tried to push her words from his mind.
In order to improve their communication skills, the boys dined out four nights a week with families that were native speakers of Orunean, Fenn, Vinthian and Sulese. There were many such families associated with the academy. At these dinners, the apprentices spoke only the language of the hosts, learned their manners, grew familiar with the national foods which they learned to prepare, and paid attention to the more subtle aspects such as humour.
Every second class of each subject was now presented in a foreign language. Environment, Aedan was beginning to understand, was foundational to their training, and it underpinned a great deal more than language studies.
They were required not only to learn from but to live in a wide range of environments.
The first was the wild, where they continued to develop their survival skills – trapping, fishing, hunting and, when necessary, scavenging for food. Locusts, slugs, worms, and even certain roots were among the last choices. They were taught to recognise the rocks like flint and chert, sharp and hard enough to strike a spark from steel; then Wildemar took away their steel and taught them to make fire with wood, friction and blisters.
The next environment was a little easier. Each boy had to study at least two trades, common jobs that would be found in any town or city, jobs where it would be possible to find employment and slip into the working ranks of any society. They were allowed to apprentice to farmers, butchers, masons, blacksmiths, tailors, cobblers and several more.
Aedan chose livestock farm labour and carpentry. He showed himself a natural hand with the animals, and within weeks, proved himself the most useless carpenter’s apprentice in all of Castath. Whether it was a lack of patience or just the wrong kind of head for angles and planes, he produced consistently un-sellable work. His chairs never balanced until he’d sawn so much from one leg and then another that the seat was half way to the ground. His tables were never flat, the wobbly joins never flush. Even Kian, whose positive enthusiasm knew no clouds, seemed to despair of Aedan’s prospects. For Aedan, the smells and feel of woodwork were nostalgic, and he did not regret his choice, though he stood alone in this.
The training environment that followed was something unexpected. For many, it proved to be the most trying aspect of their preparation. They were clothed in rags and sent, for three weeks, to work beside the poorest and lowest – fullers, street cleaners, lime-burners, gong farmers, and worst of all, the tanners whose days were spent in the heavy fumes rising from concoctions of urine, dung-water and animal skins that slowly rotted until the hair could be removed and leather produced. The boys would then spend their evenings in the worst alleys where their sleeping bays had been arranged and paid for by the academy – the streets were territorial and newcomers were not smiled on if they did not show the proper monetary respect to the alley-lords.
The programme had been running for years and the boys were expected and tolerated as the outsiders they were. Here they discovered a world that many of them had happily consigned to ignorance. For those from wealthy families, the shock was beyond words.
It was not just the matter of hygiene. On the narrow back roads of the Seeps, the veneer of civil society was missing. The brutality of selfishness and the rule of might wore no genteel cloak and stood behind no formal niceties. Here, in full view, was that which was swept under the carpets of the rich.
Aedan’s worries about his father’s thugs subsided a little after a few days. Perhaps, he thought, they had lost interest in him. Still, he found it difficult to sleep and jolted awake at every sound.
Like the rest of the apprentices, he was distressed by roughness of street ways when there was no “law” or “money” walking past, but soon he began to notice kindness and generosity too, though there was little to be generous with. Old men gave their bread to a sick friend; a woman defended another’s baby from a drunk; children without parents took care of their siblings, shouldering responsibilities no child should have.
At first, Aedan was not accepted into any of the surprisingly close-knit spheres. But one evening he gained the friendship of two old men, Garald and Hayes, when he stood up to a young, truncheon-swinging thief who wanted their small meal. After a long, hushed discussion the men called Aedan over to sit with them instead of “retreating so lonesome-like”.
There was no trouble finding a topic of conversation, for they were deep in the streams of rumour that continued to flow in from the eastern towns. The ideas on which they wanted Aedan’s opinion made Rillete’s seem tame. And it was not only talk from the east.
“These be strange times,” Garald said in a raspy voice, cracked with wear and age. “Since that unnatural storm with its lightning strike looking like gold and fire pouring into the earth, there’s something changed here. At nights, sometimes I’m feeling things in the ground under these old bones. Shakes and shiverings that don’t belong in rock. You mark my words, boy. There’s something been disturbed under this city. You be sure to tell them folks back at the ’cademy.”
When the three weeks were up, the ragged apprentices made their way back to the academy. A few of them were in bad shape. Seeing as the programme was under Kollis’s supervision, they complained bitterly to him about the exercise. Kollis let them speak. After several had told their stories, he explained.
“There are few things that can be properly understood without experience. If you learned weapons from a book, how useful do you think you would be?”
There were a few murmured replies – not very useful.
“Understanding a society means understanding the whole society, not just the part that dresses well. As marshals, you will need to understand a city’s structure from one end of the social ladder to the other. Circumstances on an operation might require you to adapt, to hide for long times where you had not expected to, or to seek information where you would rather not.
“But more importantly, the exercise was to move you to empathy and broaden your understanding of what it is to be human.”
Much as he struggled to accept anything from Kollis, Aedan had to admit that there was sense here. The experience had not been the most enjoyable, but it had brought a new depth to what he saw when he looked out over the city. For the first time, some of the apprentices were beginning
to understand the plight of the lower classes, not as an idea, but as hunger and thirst.
Peashot remained silent and morose through all of it. Aedan had once visited him in his alley. The little foxy-eyed boy had grunted at the attempts to spark conversation and remained facing the wall, hacking and scratching gravestones into the bricks with his knife. His mood lingered through the following week when Kollis began a series of classes on religion.
Kollis’s introduction was a relatively cynical description of the old faith – the belief in the Ancient, the creator who was said to be before all and above all. He then moved on with far greater enthusiasm to the rich tapestry of faiths now accessible – Eclonism, Telresh, Chorism, Shendra, and several more.
Peashot raised his hand and said without emotion that he thought all religion was stupid and wanted to know how a tapestry of lies was a good thing.
Kollis, trying to control his voice, asked how anyone could dare make such a statement.
Peashot replied that he was surprised anyone could do otherwise. In the argument that followed, he managed to offend almost everyone in the room with his forthright and tactless evaluations of their beliefs.
Kollis, while he believed in many obscure things, did not believe in the cane. Before the class was done, Peashot succeeded in converting him.
As the apprentices were required to take partners to the dinners and learn how to conduct themselves in different cultures, they saw the girls from the medical class regularly. Delwyn caused something of a stir when she partnered Lorrimer for the first time, but it was Ilona who made them stumble and stutter and knot their tongues when asking her to partner them. She was growing prettier by the day. The boys were all noticing, and not just the boys from their class. Heads were turning wherever she went. It gave Aedan an oddly protective feeling. He had wanted to walk with her several times, but the words always got stuck when she smiled at him – and she had smiled at him often since the night of the gang run-in. They had shared something special, something not forgotten. Gone was the cold disregard of those early days. Now that she had distanced herself from Malik’s poisonous accusations, Aedan was finding her to be a much nicer girl.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 44
