by L D Inman
“Be off with you, then.” Stevens made a shooing motion. “Get yourself some bruises at sparring court for me.”
“Hah. Show up some time this week, and they won’t all be vicarious bruises.”
“Promises, promises.”
Douglas went, chuckling. Riding down the lift, he reflected that if the presence of Jarrow was part of the Ryswyckian taste for punishment, it was no wonder Barklay hadn’t resisted his installment. The real worry was the guard Barklay was keeping over his association with Douglas. It betrayed a divided strategy; but Douglas had already made up his mind to stop worrying about it.
He made up his mind again, as he probably would the next day and the next, and set out across the field of rain toward the main hall.
~*~
Speir tapped briefly on the door of Douglas’s quarters.
“Yes?”
“It’s me.”
“Come in,” he said.
She swung in, shut the door behind her, and made for the cushioned bench in the corner across from Douglas’s desk. He swiveled toward her; he was in his shirtsleeves, and his cravat dangled over the back of his chair.
“Did you bring the—oh, I see you got out of your sling,” he said, watching her as she unshouldered her scrip with both hands.
“I did, and I did. Just came from the infirmary, in fact. I was hoping Wallis’d clear me to get back into the weight room too, but no such luck. I’m to wait another ten days for that.”
“I hear patience is a virtue,” Douglas murmured. Speir chucked her stylus at him; he caught it against his body and tossed it back, grinning briefly.
“Oh, and Corda is doing much better,” Speir added, digging out the relevant tablet and handing it over to him. Corda had replaced Speir as the combatant of general interest, to Speir’s mixed relief: she had enjoyed the clamorous attention for only a week before it palled. “That was the best match I’ve seen in years,” Marag had said confidentially to her after a class session, and, “Thank you, sir,” she had answered in wonder. Their fellows had congratulated her even more than they had the actual winner of the match, a fact which Douglas had accepted with generous pleasure; and Speir had not wanted for eager helpers with doors and heavy objects.
All the same, it was better to walk the halls with two good arms again. And better still that Corda was expected to make a full recovery.
“Yes, I heard something of the sort from Stevens this morning. Rose will be pleased. Does he know?” Douglas looked up from his perusal of her notes.
“Yes, I met him coming out from his visit.” Speir settled herself more comfortably on the bench and arranged her study materials around her, enjoying the sensation of having both hands free.
“By the way,” Douglas said, in a suddenly neutral tone that meant mischief, “Stevens still has a fancy for you.”
“That’s sweet of him.” Speir shuffled her notes, undisturbed. “He has prettier comrades to choose from.”
“Most of whom have also turned him down at one point or another,” Douglas pointed out. “He usually forgets gracefully after a time. You, however, knocked him down twice.”
She looked up with a grin. “I’d hate to give up such an abiding advantage.”
“I don’t blame you,” Douglas chuckled.
“Poor Stevens. Can’t somebody get him properly laid?”
“Oh, he doesn’t lack the company. He just likes to complain that he does. I wouldn’t worry.”
Speir gave a gentle snort and opened her book.
“Have you met the new instructor yet?” Douglas asked her, eyes still on his notes.
“Not to speak to. I was close by when Marag was showing him the infirmary side of the arena complex. He looked a little overwhelmed. Have you met him yet?”
“Not yet,” Douglas said, a guarded look crossing his face. “Stevens said he isn’t one of us.”
“Well, he isn’t, I suppose. Yet. By the way, I did get clearance from Wallis to help with the service course, though not with the training modules. Stevens will be in charge of those—”
Douglas looked up. “I thought you were going home for the whole break.”
“I was, but Dury asked me if I’d teach the defense-works and meteorology modules while his replacement is being trained for next term. I think he was anxious to get away, so I said yes. I’m still going home for a week, once the service course ends and Commander Jarrow is ready to take up his duties.”
“Dury’s child is about to be born any time, I hear—little wonder he’s so ready to start his furlough.”
“Mm,” was Speir’s only answer. She turned her gaze briefly out the window at the gathering dusk. She hadn’t heard back from the Med House after her message about the summer break. She’d have to send another one to apprise them of her change of plans anyway; perhaps she’d better ask for an open line to talk to the attendants directly.
“You think you’ll look to have children soon?” She woke to the fact that Douglas was looking at her speculatively.
“Soon?” she repeated, startled. “No, not soon. I want to get established in a good commission first. But someday. I haven’t started planning for it yet.” Douglas had been to university before joining the army, so he was two years older than she; it wasn’t much of a difference, but occasionally she ran up against a mild shock at the further ground he’d covered in thought and experience. She hadn’t thought about starting her own family. She thought about it now.
“I’d want a good commission,” she repeated, slowly. “And good living quarters in case I decided to take maternal furlough. Then I’d have to get my CHT reversed—don’t know how long it’d take to be fertile again—and find a good fellow and sponsor who’d be willing to reverse his….”
“You’re not thinking of getting your child from a civilian?” Douglas looked amused. “A civilian man wouldn’t have a CHT to reverse.”
“I don’t know any civilians,” Speir protested. “My parents’ friends growing up were all either navy or retired military working for the government. And I don’t think I’m likely to meet any civilians in my career as it stands, do you?”
“No,” Douglas admitted. “Depends, too, on what’s happening with the war, I suppose.”
There was an odd note in his voice, and his look had gone inward. “Is that worrying you?” Speir asked him, gently.
“The war?” It was Douglas’s turn to look startled. “No….No. My worries are closer home.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You have worries, then.”
He looked at her, frowning, as if assessing what he might tell her. Then he shrugged, and left it at that. Speir gave him a little twist of the mouth, by way of understanding, and returned to her book. It was probably something to do with Barklay. She knew Douglas had Barklay’s confidence, and though nobody had said anything about it, the whole school was aware of a subtle uneasiness between Barklay and Central Command. The awareness had risen like ground-mist over the tangible squelch of rumor; it seemed to have something to do with the new instructor, though whether he was a real attractor or merely the occasion for speculation Speir could only guess.
“Are you hungry?” Douglas said suddenly.
It hadn’t been too long after dinner, but, “I can be,” Speir said. “What have you got?”
“My sister Em sent me a package last week,” Douglas said, digging in a drawer of his desk. “I skipped supper and didn’t pick up any leftovers at cleanup—”
“You shouldn’t do that,” Speir said. “It’s not good for you.”
“Oh, believe me, my elder siblings have made the argument thoroughly. Em, however, also sent me these.” He flipped her a small packet wrapped in waxed paper. Speir caught it and unpeeled the paper to find a sticky bar of nuts and spices and honey.
“Mm. Thank you.”
For a time they ate and read, rather noisily as the sticky bars required much licking of fingers, and as the evening deepened, the light on Douglas’s desk was left alone to enfold the
m in its small radiance.
At last the faint sound of the carillon reached them, and Speir lifted her head. “Night watch,” she observed, with a small yawn. “I’d better get along to my own quarters. I thought to spend some time on the treadmill before turning in, but I think I’ll wait till early light.” She gathered together her things and repacked her scrip, carelessly, stifling another yawn.
“Mm,” Douglas said, deep in his reading. He drew himself out of the text with an effort and looked up. “Good night, then.”
Still savoring her freedom of movement, Speir shouldered her scrip and headed to the door. “See you at breakfast, then,” she said, “if you don’t skip it.”
He balled up his sticky-bar wrapper and lobbed it at her. Laughing, she put the door between herself and the missile. It bounced harmlessly and fell with a soft rattle to the tiled floor, and she heard Douglas laugh quietly as she latched it closed.
~*~
The sun came out to dazzle them on the day the service-course students descended on Ryswyck campus, flashing out in blinding glints from the row of shuttles parked on the airfield, casting a platinum-white sheen on the damp pavement tiles, and turning every frond and blade of grass to a trove of diamonds. Even the mud shone, as the men and women in their dark-gray fatigues picked their way among the puddles, balancing their gear on their shoulders.
The advent of summer heightened the sense of carnival that always took Ryswyck over during a service course: Barklay would never have called his school a quiet place, but the usual rhythms carried with them their own peace. Now, however, the cadets’ wing hummed cacophonously with the bustle and chaos of guest pupils laying out bedrolls and tripping over one another’s rucksacks, and the junior officers moved so quickly they made little breezes eddy after them, tickling the edges of bills posted on the notice boards. The senior officers, lined up to greet the commanding officers as they shepherded their charges in, made shadows as sharp as the dress uniforms they wore, black for army and dark blue for navy, pointed with bright color in the red linings of their hoods and the insignia ribbons on their epaulets.
The com-tower crew’s work was doubled handling the arrivals, and the complement for every shift increased from the usual one junior officer and one cadet runner, to two of each. The kitchen was a hive of activity, and sparring court was curtailed so that the officers of E Rota could help A Rota with dinner preparation. Nobody minded. The windows of the kitchen, usually fogged against the cold grey of the sky outside, were sharp obelisks of depthless blue against which the white aprons of the line cooks moved like merry sails, and the hair of each Ryswyckian shone through its net with an unwonted bright gloss of varying hue.
The beginning of the service course coincided with the last evening of the spring term, and so the evening’s opening festivities were mingled with the traditional farewell to the season past. Lieutenant Bell was to be honored on the occasion of his departure to take up his new commission at the supply base at Killness Pass. In the morning, the better portion of the first-year cadets would go also, vacating for their holiday while the second-years and the junior officers carried on the work of Ryswyck for the service course.
If any night could have shown Ryswyck to its best advantage, this one did. The additional people in the hall, half again the usual number, swelled and deepened the evening chant so that more than ever it became a living thing, a breathing magisterial amplitude of spirit. Barklay scarcely had to move or speak to see the whole thing unfold before him; looking out over the ranks of students and officers at their benches, he marveled at the fullness with which they had taken up his vision and brought it forth into color and life.
Whatever else happens, he thought, this I have done.
After dinner, the unison of the body effervesced and dissipated, as the students finished their meal and left with their guests; Barklay listened to scraps of conversations as they passed him with brief bows and salutes, and exulted at both their hospitality and the pleasure they took in it. Taking encouragement from his own students, he exerted himself to guide the visiting officers to the guest quarters and make sure that they were provided for. He found that even Jarrow had got into the spirit of things and given his colleagues from Amity Base a helpful tour of the guest quarters.
With nothing left to do, Barklay went back to the main hall and listened to his footsteps echo on the deserted stone. As he passed the empty assembly hall, he heard faint clatterings in the kitchen, and followed the sound to its source, smiling to himself.
He found Lieutenant Speir among the polished steel surfaces, swathed in an apron and plunged almost to the rolls of her sleeves in dish suds. Two of her cadets were scraping pots into storage containers.
“Good evening, Lieutenant,” Barklay said, and she flashed him a brief smile. “I thought that Lieutenant Douglas put himself in charge of cleanup this week.”
“He did,” she said, “but Beathas asked him to consult on tomorrow’s module, and so I took over. There’s not much left to do.”
Not much, Barklay observed, except a stack of dirty plates as high as she was. He unbuttoned and shrugged out of his tunic, rolled up his own sleeves, and took a drying cloth from its drawer.
“The washer’s full,” Speir explained as he began drying the plates she’d already set in the rack. “I decided it’d be faster to do the rest by hand.”
“Yes.”
“Not to mention—” she confessed— “a pleasant novelty to use both hands for.”
“You’re glad to be back at full function, I take it.” Barklay took the next dish she handed him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you certainly earned well both the injury and the respite.”
“Thank you, sir.” Her smile flashed again. It was late and they’d all had a long day, but Speir was brimful of energy still. Barklay envied her her youth.
“By the way,” he said, after they’d finished several plates, “I wish to thank you for giving up your break to help with the service course.”
“It’s my pleasure, sir—”
“—I know how much the time means to you. Thank you.”
Speir shrugged lightly. “I still get a week to spend at home. That’s enough, I think.” She bent over a stubborn stain on a plate. “Probably more than enough, in fact…. He doesn’t like me to watch him suffer.” She passed the plate to him; her smile had become a compression of the lips that Barklay understood well enough from the inside. But though the grief was evident in her face, Speir’s hands and voice were calm as she took the next plate. “He won’t listen to any of my arguments on the subject,” she told him. “He insisted I go on to school and not stay with him till it’s over, and since that makes the shock worse when I do visit, he wants me to keep the visits brief. He should know after all these years that I don’t need protecting.”
Don’t you? Barklay thought. But as she turned to look up at him, the graceful smile back on her lips and in her eyes, he found himself saying instead: “Does anything disturb your balance, Lieutenant?”
Her roguish grin lightened his spirits. “The secret is,” she said, “to keep your center of gravity as close to the ground as you can.”
“Sound advice,” Barklay said.
He dried another plate and laid it on the clean stack.
~*~
Speir’s words stayed with Barklay as the days of the service course went on. It was good advice, and not just because it fit Lieutenant Speir’s philosophy of life; without knowing it, she seemed to have intuited Barklay’s need for humility and confirmed him in it. Between her and Douglas, Barklay thought, he could keep securely tethered. Watching them together in the arena, Barklay had felt simultaneously exalted and thrown down: here was courtesy as he had meant it, and more than he had ever understood how to mean. And here was a purity of which he was not worthy.
Douglas’s advice, too, was worth following; and Barklay tried. Especially since Commander Jarrow seemed to be everywhere, all the time: asking questi
ons about sparring court, consulting with his rota captains about duty schedules, listening to cadets explain their studies, even reading all the notices on the boards one afternoon when Barklay ventured from his office into the hall. And he watched the proceedings of the service course with clement attention, like a cat on a wall before it begins to twitch its tail.
Barklay’s initial impression of him was reinforced by this behavior: that Jarrow had come looking for an excuse to hate Ryswyck, and not finding it, was torn between hating that and being moved to sympathy and concord. He was going to come down on one side or the other before long—and since either attitude was ultimately dangerous, it didn’t much signify tactically to Barklay which line Jarrow took. It would be gratifying, though, to count coup on Selkirk by winning Jarrow to Ryswyck’s ethos.
This was another good reason to follow Douglas’s advice. As the days passed and Barklay’s need grew greater, he reminded himself severely that sending for Douglas, especially while Jarrow’s bent was so uncertain, was a bad idea. Of course, the military canons were ambiguous on the subject, and Douglas was well past his majority—but Barklay knew instinctively that legality would count for little if someone wanted to make a scandal. And someone did. So Barklay would leave off seeking his lieutenant’s favors for the time being. That was all.
But he couldn’t very well avoid seeing Douglas regularly, and sometimes at close quarters; the service course kept them all very busy, but Douglas’s teaching responsibilities brought him in the company of the senior officers and the other rota captains to Barklay’s office daily. Barklay had many years’ practice treating all his subordinates the same whether or not he had a private understanding with them, but he was painfully alive to the fact that Jarrow was watching the way Barklay related to every other person in the room. Anatomizing, analyzing. Synthesizing. And while Douglas’s control was better than Barklay’s, yet his very calm was eloquent, and perfectly readable if one only had the key.
