Honor's Paradox-ARC (13 page)

“I thought you had a whiff of the stable about you.”

She was about to send Rue on her way when the door burst open. Timmon plunged through and slammed it after him in the face of an Ardeth hunting party.

“They’ve got a list of chores as long as your arm,” he gasped, leaning against the door. “All the household duties I’ve avoided since last summer. They’ve actually been keeping score! Can you believe it?”

“Easily,” muttered Rue as Jame, laughing softly, pulled on her boots.

“Given that,” she said, rising to stomp them home, “why are you here?”

He flopped onto her bed. “I was on my way down to breakfast, half asleep on my feet, and clean forgot what day it was. Before I knew it, they’d cut me off from my quarters. Eek!”

Addy had emerged and was crawling across his hand.

“Will it bite me?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Just hold still. Rue, go and have fun. Brier, if you don’t want to play, at least take the day off. Don’t worry about me.”

Rue grinned and slipped outside where she could be heard indignantly driving Timmon’s pursuers out of the Knorth barracks. With a stiff nod to Jame, Brier followed her.

Meanwhile, the snake had achieved Timmon’s lap and was poking around there, curiously, to the Ardeth’s rigid discomfort. Jame scooped Addy up and draped her around her neck.

“You can stay here if you want.”

“Will you stay with me?” he asked hopefully.

“Sorry, no. I have something to do.”

First, she went in search of Jorin and found him curled up on the chest on Greshan’s quarters that contained the hibernating wyrm. The ounce seemed to be spending more and more time there, as if on watch. The last time Jame had opened the box to check, she had seen movement inside an increasingly transparent chrysalis. Soon it would hatch . . . into what? No one knew anything about the life cycle of a darkling crawler. Not for the first time, she questioned the wisdom of keeping such a thing around, but then in its caterpillar phase it
had
played with Jorin and purred. “Darkling,” as she well knew, was a relative term.

Leaving the cat on sleepy guard, she went out the window and climbed to New Tentir’s roof.

Even though crusts of snow still lingered under some of the denser evergreens, it was a fine, crisp day with spring in the air like the warm hint of wild clover. Early flowers freckled the training fields. Wispy clouds floated overhead, chasing their shadows northward up the Riverland’s valley floor.

Noise below caught her attention.

In the square, a squad of sargents was being drilled and getting thoroughly mixed up as they tried to follow the contradictory orders shouted at them by gleeful cadets.

Meanwhile, one of the more unpopular ten-commanders thundered around the arcade in a punishment run.

And off to one side, a solitary randon officer wobbled as if drunk through a game of hopscotch, surrounded by a crowd of jeering cadets. One of them was Damson, from Jame’s own ten-command. She remembered now that this particular randon had often made fun of Damson’s weight and stocky build, just as Vant had done. That in turn reminded her of how Vant was said to have stumbled into the fire pit as if pushed. Glancing up, Damson caught her eye, flinched, and slid back into the crowd. Sometime soon, Jame thought, she needed to have a word with that cadet.

First, though, she had to find Shade.

Sliding a hand under the serpent’s head, she looked at her eye to eye. “Where is your mistress?” The black tongue flicked the tip of her nose, but she got no other response.

Jame wasn’t sure how smart the adder was—enough to find her, but not enough to lead her back to Shade? That was odd. Then again, while Jorin had alerted her barracks that she was in trouble when the Randir had kidnapped her and thrust her into Bear’s den, the cat hadn’t been able to convey anything but his distress. Of course, no one of the Falconer’s class had been present, which might or might not have made a difference. Perhaps a dog would do better. That in turn reminded her of Gorbel’s pook Twizzle. From here, she could see the tall, semiblind Caineron barracks. Well, why not ask?

Gorbel looked around as she swung in through his bedroom window. “Don’t you ever use the door?”

“You know how I would be greeted below. Fash has a score to settle with me.”

“Huh. Since the Council meeting, yes, not that he didn’t deserve what he got.”

The Caineron Lordan was setting his boar spears in order, his armor with its cuirass and skirt of braided leather nearby ready to be donned.

“I’m not about to waste a good hunting day playing silly buggers with a bunch of retarded brats,” he said, seeing her glance at his gear. “Twizzle stays here, though. For one thing, it’s too dangerous. For another, he makes tracking almost too easy.”

“I was just about to ask if I could borrow him.”

She explained.

Gorbel grunted. “So that’s why you’re wearing the Randir’s snake like a damned torque. What, no note tied to her neck, or should that be to her tail?”

“I’m serious, Gorbel. Something is wrong.”

“There always is, when you’re around. All right. Take Twizzle. He can’t follow a normal trail worth scat, but if you fix your mind on what you want, he should take you to it sooner or later.”

He dumped the pook into her arms. She reversed him. Dog and snake regarded each other with what seemed like wary recognition.

On the way down, Jame made the mistake of taking the stairs. On the landing, she met Higbert.

“Just the person Fash wants to see,” he said and made a grab for her scarf, only to recoil as Addy reared back to hiss at him.

“All right, all right, go! We’ll catch up with you soon enough and that precious Brier of yours, too.”

Jame wondered, on the way down, what the Caineron had in mind for her five-commander. Few escaped Caldane’s clutches, but Brier had, to take service with her brother. Gorbel might not mind; clearly others did. However, Brier was also a seasoned warrior who had come up through the ranks. Surely she could take care of herself.

On the arcade, she was almost knocked over by the master-ten compelled to the punishment run and saw that it was Reef of the Randir.

“Run,
run
, RUN!” shouted her cadets.

Not popular, huh?
thought Jame, watching her go.
Surprise, surprise
.

Two more approaching cadets made her hesitate, but they were only Gari of the Coman and Mouse of the Edirr, both students in the Falconer’s class.

“We aren’t after you,” they assured her, “just out to see the fun. What are you doing with Addy? Where’s Shade?”

“I don’t know. In trouble somewhere. I’ve got to find her.”

The two exchanged looks. “Then we’ll round up the rest of the Falconeers to help.”

“Here.” Mouse detached one of the twin albino mice from her hair and handed it to Jame. “If you find Shade first, tell Mick and Mack will tell me. If we find her before you do, Mick will start squeaking. Just follow the direction in which he’s loudest.”

Jame accepted the mouse and let it nestle on the crown of her head, tiny pink paws nervously gripping her braids. A rap on the nose diverted Addy from what would normally have been her dinner.

Gari eyed the diminutive Twizzle. “Maybe he’s a great tracker, maybe not. We’ll see if we can find Tarn and Torvi.”

They left.

Jame checked that Addy wasn’t about to have Mick for a snack, put Twizzle down, and followed his flouncing progress along the arcade.

In the great hall, cadets had stretched a rope from one second-story balcony to the other and were making a captured randon cross it. Jame recognized Bran from her special weapons’ class. He wobbled wildly, causing her to catch her breath. Then he noted her in the shadows and winked, or seemed to—with only one good eye, it was hard to tell.

The pook led her down the stairs into the subterranean stable where she found the horse-master mucking out stalls.

“Some fool cadet thought it would be funny to set me at this work,” he said, pausing to wipe his bald head with a sleeve. “As if I didn’t do it every day anyway, assistants notwithstanding. Have I seen Shade? No. She comes here as little as possible; the horses don’t like her pet—which I see that you’ve got. Also a mouse, also a pook. What is this, a field day at the zoo?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, you’re to go on down. One of your cadets passed by and asked that I send you on if you followed her.”

Now what?
wondered Jame, descending into the sullen light and steaming heat of the fire timber hall.

Damson stood near the edge of a fire pit. Jame came up beside her.

“This is where Vant fell?”

“Yes, lady.”

“And that was your doing. How?”

“I can make small changes in people’s heads. Make them dizzy. Make them stumble. Make them feel what it’s like to be fat and clumsy.”

“Now I remember. When Timmon, Gorbel and I were standing at attention in the snow, something made me fall over.”

Damson shuffled, not meeting her eyes. “Vant kept whispering in my ear: ‘Do it, do it, do it, you fat little sow.’ And so I did.”

Jame reflected that she had been lucky only to have lost her balance, and that into nothing worse than snow. A few small changes in the head . . . ! How much did it take to cause seizures or even death? Damson appeared to be a Shanir linked to That-Which-Destroys, her power an inversion of a healer’s in that it allowed her to hurt without touching, apparently without even much thought. God’s claws, how dangerous.

“Don’t do it again,” she told the cadet. “If you strike me, I may strike you back. Hard.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re nothing like Vant. I like you. There. Do you see him?”

The hall with its smoldering timbers cast few shadows, but one seemed to stand against the charred bark of an ancient tree on the far side of the pit. Fire laced its flaking skin and its eyes glowed . . . or was that only a trick of the light?

Damson snickered. “How he glares! Where’s his high and mighty pride now?”

By the smirk on the cadet’s plump face, Jame suddenly realized that Damson didn’t regret her deed. On the contrary, she had come back because the memory of it gave her pleasure.

“Now see here: you can’t kill people just because they’re unpleasant to you.”

“No?” Damson seemed puzzled. “Why do I have this ability, if not to use it?”

Trinity. Was the girl ignorant or insane? Jame herself tended to take responsibility for things genuinely not her fault, like Vant, hence the Burning Ones and the Dark Judge who came sniffing after her—or was it Damson they were after? But this cadet seemed to have no sense of responsibility at all, and precious little conscience. Was she like a hole in the air to them? How did one judge such an anomaly as a Kencyr with no inborn sense of honor?

“Think,” she said, a little desperately. “There has to be a balance. What Vant did to you was nasty, but was it worth his life?”

Damson pouted. “You almost killed him yourself after Anise died.”

“But I didn’t. The Commandant brought me to my senses in time. Do you trust his judgment? Yes? Then consider before you act: would he approve?”

“I’ll . . . try.” A bit resentfully she added, “You do make things hard.”

Jame sighed. “They often are. The easy thing isn’t always the right thing. We Shanir have to use the Old Blood responsibly or we risk becoming the monsters that some of the lords think us.”

“You mean, like your brother.”

“Tori does have that tendency, which is another reason not to abuse your gifts while in his service.”

With that, Damson trudged off, looking thoughtful and somewhat huffy.

Jame scanned the dark across the pit, but no one was there. Perhaps there never had been.

“Why
are
so many of us monsters?” she asked no one in particular.

Receiving no answer, she followed Damson back into the cooler, upper air.

II

The cadet had disappeared by the time Jame reached the upper hall, but Bran’s tormenters were still there, cheering his successful passage across the rope. One of them saw Jame. In a moment, all had given chase. She dashed up the stairs and soon lost them in the dim hallways of Old Tentir, far from the outer walls. There, let them stay until they either stumbled out or someone heard their piteous cries for help.

Her feet had taken her near Bear’s quarters as so often they did. She retrieved a candle stub from a niche and followed the rank, animal smell, thinking with a pang of her teacher shut up alone in his stinking den. The question of justice still bothered her. Where did it lie in what had happened to him? To begin with, nowhere, probably. He had been a warrior and had gotten his wounds fairly in battle—yes, fighting for her father in the White Hills, for a man who could not abide such a Shanir as Bear was and had been.

For that matter, Ganth’s madness had infected the entire Host, and most held him responsible for that day’s brutal outcome. Was he Shanir, to have had such power? She hadn’t thought of that before, but it made sense. What irony, though, given how he had felt about those of the Old Blood, like herself.

But did everything have a reason? That was hard to believe without some overarching, all-powerful authority, which didn’t seem like a description of the Kencyrath’s Three-Faced God unless he/she/it was far more devious and cruel than Jame had ever supposed. After all, wasn’t that why her people clung so desperately to their labyrinthine code of honor? Without it, what were they? With an absent god, what else held them to account and gave them worth? There
must
be limits, and personal responsibility.

Her thoughts circled back to Bear. Surely there was nothing just in his squalid confinement.

Or was there? Long ago, he had dismembered a cadet foolish enough to taunt him and Lord Caineron had given his brother Sheth a choice: confine his brother or kill him.

One could argue that Caldane was protecting the other cadets.

Knowing the man, though, Jame believed that he was setting a test for his war-leader. If the Commandant killed his brother, he could claim that he was only following his lord’s orders, even though he clearly didn’t think that Bear deserved death. At the same time, Caldane believed that the guilt for this unjust act would not be his, because he personally hadn’t carried it out. That was Honor’s Paradox: did one’s honor lie in oneself, or in following orders?