Shaman's Crossing ss-1

by Robin Hobb

  “Epiny stays in my mind. She… defies comparison.”

  I felt myself flush slightly. “That’s a kind way to put it,” I replied gruffly. I felt it a bit unfair of Spink to point out just how oddly she had behaved. Surely he could see that it was not my fault, and that I had suffered just as acutely as he had.

  Then he said shyly, “She’s so sensitive, and so lovely. Like a butterfly, wafting on the wind. I think she feels things much more keenly than the rest of us.”

  For a time, I was quiet. I was shocked. Sensitive and lovely? Epiny? I had felt mostly irritated and embarrassed by her. But Spink had enjoyed her company? Strange thoughts were suddenly unfolding in my mind. To be certain, I asked him, “You liked her, then?”

  A wide and foolish grin spread across his face. “Oh, more than liked! Nevare, I am smitten with her. Smitten. I always thought that was a silly word. But now I understand completely what it means.” He took a deep breath and gave me a sorrowful look. “And now you will say that you are sorry, but that she is promised already and has been since she was a child.”

  “If you asked me, I would say she is still a child. If she is promised, I do not know of it, and I doubt it would be so.” There was a much larger obstacle, one that I was loath to point out to him, but I was equally reluctant to leave him ignorant. I gathered my courage. “The problem would not be that she was spoken for, Spink. It might be that my aunt would be unwilling to consider an offer from a new nobility family. My uncle did not speak of it directly, but it is an open secret within our family that she resents my father’s elevation and allies herself only with old nobility.”

  He shrugged, almost dismissing my concern. “But her father seemed to like me, and Epiny herself… well…” He stopped short before he said anything indelicate.

  “Epiny obviously likes you,” I admitted. “I thought her rather too forward about indicating that to you.”

  His face and tone lightened, as if I had just given a brother’s consent to his courtship. “Then if I could win your uncle’s regard and good will, I might have a chance with her.”

  I doubted it. I suspected that my aunt had a will of steel. Seeing how Epiny had ridden roughshod over my uncle, I doubted that he would stand up to my aunt well. And even if my uncle were well disposed toward Spink himself, all he had told me of his family made me sure that he was a poor prospect as a match for my cousin. No money, no influence, new nobility… “You might have a chance,” I heard myself concede, simply because I lacked the courage to point out to him that his odds of success were less than a whisper’s chance against storm winds.

  He looked at me oddly, as if he had somehow managed to hear my mental reservation. “Speak to me plainly here, my friend. Do you feel I set my sights too high? Would you oppose my courting your cousin?”

  I laughed out loud. “Spink, no, of course not! I can think of nothing I would like better than to call you cousin as well as friend. But what I might oppose is my cousin courting you! My friend, in temperament and manners, I think you could do far better than Epiny. Even if you were thinking of taking a plains wife.”

  He looked shocked and then gave an odd laugh. “A plains wife? My mother would kill me. No, she wouldn’t have a chance. My brother would do it first.”

  Our steps had carried us to the door of our dormitory. We checked in with the sergeant and then went up the steps to our room. Spink asked me not to speak too much of Epiny before the other fellows, and I was only too happy to comply. We greeted Oron and Caleb. They were both finishing their assignments at the study table. They kept us listening for some time as they recounted their stay with Oron’s aunt. She had hosted a musical gathering at her home, and they were full of stories of ribald songs, risque dancing, and a young woman who had bedded both of them on the same night with neither the wiser to it at the time. Even now, they were astonished, scandalized and delighted to have such a wild adventure to tell. It made the tales from Caleb’s penny adventure books pale by comparison.

  I was almost relieved that they gave us no room to talk of our own time away from the dormitory. Spink and I were talking of settling down and getting our assignments finished before the evening meal when we opened the door to our room. There we halted, filled with dismay that rapidly turned to anger.

  My bunk had been overturned and all my books strewn about the floor. My carefully pressed and brushed uniform parts were scattered around the room. It looked as if someone had thrown them down and then trampled and kicked them about. There was a dusty footprint clearly outlined on the back of my jacket. Spink’s things had suffered similar vandalism. The bedding from the other bunks in the room had been flung about, but Natred and Kort’s belongings still rested on their shelves. Whoever had done this had targeted Spink and me for most of the mayhem. Spink recovered first, beginning to curse savagely in a low voice very unlike his normal tone. I stepped back into the common room and called Oron and Caleb. They came quickly, wondering what could be wrong, and then stood in shock when they saw the mess in our room.

  “Any ideas on who might have done this?” I asked them.

  Oron spoke first. “We only returned to Carneston House about an hour ago. And I had no reason to come in here.” He looked at Caleb.

  Caleb was as mystified. “Our room was fine when we unpacked. Nothing was touched in there.”

  “Check the other room,” Spink suggested brusquely.

  In the room that Gord shared with Rory and Trist, Gord’s bedding and possessions were the only ones that had been disturbed. The mess in there was even worse than in our room; Gord’s books and personal items had been heaped on top of his bedding on the floor, and someone had urinated on them. In the closed room, the smell was overpowering. We quickly backed out.

  “I’m reporting this to Sergeant Rufet,” I announced.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Caleb asked me. The gangly cadet looked even more anxious than usual.

  “It’s going to be seen as tattling,” Oron added, scowling. “And no one likes a snitch, Nevare.”

  In one sense, I knew he was right. A deep dread surged in me. This was how they reacted simply because we knew what they had done. This was how they sought to cow and silence us. When they discovered that we had talked to my uncle and that he had taken the matter to the commander, what would they do then? Abruptly, I knew that keeping silent about this and accepting their abuse would not stop it. My uncle’s complaint to the Colonel Stiet might stir them to worse things, but keeping silent hadn’t made them leave us alone. Reporting this was the only way I could stand up to them. Difficult as it was, even though my fellow cadets might see me as weak, I held myself to what my uncle had said I must do. “It’s not ‘snitching’.” I told Caleb and Oron. “It’s a cadet reporting vandalism to the dormitories while we were gone.” They just stared at me, unconvinced. Why was this so difficult? My uncle had said it was the right thing to do. “I’m going downstairs now. Leave this mess alone until Rufet has seen it.”

  “Should I go with you?” Spink offered quietly.

  “I think one of us is enough,” I told him, but he knew I was grateful for his offer.

  With every step I took down the stairs, doubts assailed me. Reporting it seemed a whining and babyish thing to do, running to the sergeant to tattle. I knew the others might speak with disdain. Were we too soft to take a bit of pranking in stride? Yet the early months of school were past, and what had been done to our rooms went beyond ordinary hazing.

  I stood before the sergeant’s desk until he looked up at me. Then, in as calm a voice as I could muster, I reported the damage to our rooms and possessions. He heard me out, his face darkening with anger. Then he led the way back up the stairs to survey the mess for himself. He questioned Oron and Caleb, but they had nothing to tell. The mess could have been made at any time. When he realized there would be no easy discovery of the culprits, his orders were terse. “Clean it up. Have Cadet Lading report to me. I’ll see that you get fresh bedding. There isn�
��t much more I can do.”

  Spink and I set to work on our area immediately. As our other roommates trickled in, they expressed various levels of outrage or amusement at our predicament.

  “It isn’t just the time lost when we should be doing assignments,” Spink complained as he pulled the bedding tight on his bunk. “It’s the feeling of invasion, and of being the butt of a joke with no chance to hit back.”

  Rory had come into the room. Without anyone asking him to do it, he began to put Natred’s and Kort’s bedding back on their bunks as he spoke to us. “At least your stuff is just tossed about. Our room reeks like a sty and it’s freezing in there. Oron says he just about passed out from the smell when he first walked in, so he opened our window. That didn’t help much. Trist is furious with Gord; he says if he don’t come back soon and clean up the mess, he’s just going to toss all his stuff. And I’ll be there lending a hand!”

  “It’s not Gord’s fault!” I said. “No more than this is our fault. Trist should be mad at whoever did it.”

  “Well, I sort of see it both ways,” Rory replied obstinately. “Obviously, you and Spink and Gord made someone really mad at you that night. Gord’s never said what happened, but I don’t believe he fell down the steps. Now they’re getting their own back at you all, but Trist and I are the ones who are paying for it.”

  “You’re paying for it? How?” Spink was incensed.

  “Our whole room reeks, that’s how! And Gord isn’t even here to clean it up, so we have to put up with it until he gets back. I don’t even want to go in there.”

  “You could clean it up for him.”

  “It’s his stuff. It’s his mess.”

  “You just made Natred’s and Kort’s bed up. Why is that different?”

  Rory grinned good-naturedly, but still could not completely admit his hypocrisy. “Well, their stuff isn’t covered in piss, for one thing. And for another, I like them.”

  “And you don’t like Gord?” I was surprised.

  He looked at me in disbelief that I could be so stupid. “Not much.” He sighed. “Look, Spink, I know he helps you a lot, and I guess you and Nevare both like him well enough. But you two don’t have to live with him. He smells awful when he comes in from marching, like bacon gone bad. And he’s always sweaty. And he’s noisy; his bed creaks under him at night, and he lies on his back and snores like a pig. He’s so damn big that every time he walks in the door, the room feels crowded. I’ve seen you two stand side by side and shave at the same basin when you have to hurry. Can’t do that with Gord. There’s no room. And he’s just, well, annoying. He’s always trying to be too friendly. He invites the things that happen to him with the way he calls attention to himself. Why does he have to be so huge? The first time I saw him nekkid, I just about got sick. He’s all pale and wobbly and… Well, it was Trist first said it, but I’ll admit I laughed. With the gut he has, we wonder if he even knows he has a cock. He probly hasn’t seen it in a couple of years at least.”

  Rory laughed at his own joke. Spink and I didn’t. A week ago, I would have, I realized. But now it seemed a personal affront, as if a rough joke about Gord were mockery of us as well. Why? Not because we were his friends; I still did not feel that great a personal attachment to him. It was because whoever had targeted him had attacked us as well, and somehow made the three of us into a single entity now. Like it or not, when they mocked Gord, it was mockery of us as well. I didn’t like it at all.

  Rory threw up his hands at our silent stares and shrugged defensively. “Well, take it that way if you want to. It’s not personal, not with me. I like you fellers.” He took a shallow breath as if daring himself to speak. He lowered his voice. “When I was leaving for the Academy, my father said, ‘Son, choose your friends well. Don’t let them choose you; you be the one who decides who your pals are. The needy and weak ones will always be the first to try to become close friends with those they perceive as strong. In the cavalla, a man need strong allies who will stand back to back with him, not weaklings who shelter in his shadow.’ When I first met you fellers, I knew you were strong, and that I could count on you at my back. And when I first met Gord, I knew that he didn’t have the stamina or strength to be a real officer. He’s a liability to those who befriend him. That’s why he’s always trying to be everyone’s buddy, and doing everyone favours; he knows he’ll need pals to protect him if he ever gets into a tough situation. You know that’s true.”

  I put the last book back on my shelf and then stood silent, thinking over what Rory had said. By having Spink as a friend, I’d also chosen to be associated with Gord. And, by default, that cut me off from being friends with Trist. If I had not befriended both Spink and Gord, I could have been one of Trist’s companions. I liked Spink and instinctively knew that in many ways our values were more compatible than if I had followed Trist. Yet I also knew that Trist was more charismatic, more social, and more… I searched for a word, and nearly laughed aloud when I found it. Fashionable. Trist was making connections and winning friends among the older cadets, even those of old nobility blood. He’d eaten at the commander’s table, and even now, when Caulder scorned most of the new nobility, he still greeted Trist warmly. If I had been Trist’s friend, those connections and associations would have been open to me as well. But I had met Spink first, and at my father’s recommendation, had chosen him as a friend. Had my father been wrong?

  Even as doubt and guilt for feeling that doubt assailed me, I realized that something was missing. “My rock’s gone!”

  Rory and Spink looked at me as if I were slightly mad.

  “The rock I brought from home with me. I always kept it on that shelf. It was a, well, an important keepsake.”

  “Your girl gave it to you?” Rory asked, even as Spink suggested pragmatically, “Did you look under your bunk?”

  I was on my knees, looking under every bed and in the corners of the room when I heard Gord return. He was greeted with an uproar of voices, some telling him what had befallen him even as others demanded that he immediately clean it up. I reached the door just in time to see peace and relaxation fade from his face to be replaced by his usual expression of resigned caution. It struck me for the first time how much he had changed since the first day of Academy. We all followed him to the door of his room, to gawk at his shock and dismay.

  I think the others were disappointed at his reaction. He walked into the room, looked down at the ruined books, soiled clothing, and sodden bedding and made not a sound. He did not curse or stamp or whine. He only drew in a deep breath that swelled his back against the tightness of his coat. It reminded me of a beetle’s carapace as he lowered his head into his shoulders. “What a mess,” he said finally. Then he hung up his greatcoat in his cupboard and set his weekend satchel on the floor beside it. There was a posy pinned to the lapel of his greatcoat, and I wondered if the girl he was promised had put it there. Could she love him, fat and unlovely as he was? Was that where he got the strength to go to the urine-soaked blankets and tug them off his books and notes? As he picked it up, the sodden blanket sprayed yellow drops on the floor. There was a collective chorus of groans of disgust and one or two chuckles of that horrified laughter that comes over men in bad situations.

  I stepped forward. “Sergeant Rufet said to tell you that he would issue you clean bedding.”

  Gord glanced up at me and for a moment the opacity in his eyes melted. I saw the pain this insult had dealt him. But his voice was flat when he spoke. “Thanks, Nevare. I guess that is where I’d better start then.”

  “I’ve got to get to my assignments. Spink and I didn’t get our work finished during our time away.” I was making an excuse not to help him and I knew it. I left him and got my books and went to the study table. Spink came and joined me a while later. When I glanced up at him, he said, “There’s not much I can do in there. He’s made up his bed and dried off his books as best as he can.” He opened his books. Without looking at me, he added, “All his drafting notes ar
e ruined. He asked if I thought you’d let him copy yours onto clean paper, and I said you probably would.”

  I nodded and bent my head back to my studies. A time later, I heard the swishing of a scrub brush at work.

  That incident was a turning point in my first year at the Academy. After that, the division was so plain within our rooms that we might have been wearing different uniforms. Spink, Gord and I were seen as a unit, with Kort and Natred in a separate orbit around us. They spoke to us in our room in the evening, and never shunned us, but neither did they go with us to the library or spend free time with us. Kort and Natred seemed a self-sufficient duo, not needing any other alliance. Trist ruled the roost for the rest of them. Oron was probably closest to him, or gave every sign of wishing to be. He always sat beside Trist, nodding to his every word and laughing the loudest at his jests. Caleb and Rory followed the golden cadet without question. Sometimes, Rory came to our room to visit and talk, but not as often as he had. And when we sat at the study table or at the mess table, we sat divided by our loyalties.

  We did not find out who had invaded our rooms, nor did I find my precious rock. It was strange for it to vanish, for there had been a small amount of money in a coat pocket, and that had not been taken. It became common knowledge that I had reported the incident to Sergeant Rufet. The day after we returned, I was called out of Drafting class. A third-year marched me silently to the Administration building. I was immediately guided to an upstairs chamber. My escort tapped on the door, and then waved me in. Heart hammering, I entered the room. I saluted, and then stood silently. The room was panelled in dark wood, and the winter daylight from the tall, narrow windows did not seem to reach me. There was a long table, and six men seated around it. Cadet Lieutenant Tiber, bandaged and pale, was seated to one side in a straight-backed chair. His posture was very stiff, either from nervousness or the pain of his injuries. Beside him, standing at parade rest was Cadet Ordo. I recognized Colonel Stiet and Dr Amicas among the men seated at the long table. A figure moved near the windows, and I realized Caulder Stiet was there as well, observing. I directed my salute to the colonel. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.