Honor's Paradox-ARC (30 page)

Which Tori would never let her do, Jame thought.

“Kothifir is for the best,” said Mint. “Next best is some other foreign post. Then there are the cadets who are sent home to join their house garrisons.”

“How many white pebbles qualify you for Kothifir?” asked Jame.

“It varies from year to year. Usually one white will do it, or one black for failure. There are some twenty randon with six tokens each. Most of us never get one at all, which means that we get sent wherever we’re needed. That could be good or bad. Ten-commands may also get broken up as in the second cull, say, if the commander gets a black, or a commander’s white might pull through his or her entire ten-squad intact. Then too, black cancels white and vice versa, so you’re already one behind, Ten.”

“Lovely,” muttered Jame.

It wasn’t until she and the others were on their way to the next lesson that it struck her: if she was going up into the hills for Summer’s Eve, she would miss the last day of classes with its potential tests. Well, never mind, she thought, setting her jaw; she would just have to earn enough white tokens before then.

II

From then on, each lesson taught by a randon became a test of nerves, if nothing else. Would the instructor award a pebble or not? Which color, and to whom? Some handed out all six immediately, based as much on past as present performance. Others seemed to be waiting until the last minute. A few with particularly strict standards had the reputation for only distributing as many as they truly believed to be earned, black or white.

The Falconer’s class eyed each other, wondering. Tarn and Torvi seemed clear winners, and so they proved, to some good-natured grumbling from the others. After all, one expected a dog to obey. Gari and his various insect hordes also received a white. So did Shade and Addy.

Jame sighed and ruffled Jorin’s fur. Her link with the ounce had improved, but not as much as she and (clearly) her instructor would have liked. Trust a cat to go its own way.

The Falconer only handed out one black and that, in absentia, to Gorbel, who since his return from Restormir had never reappeared in the mews.

“Pleased?” Jame asked Shade as the latter fingered her white stone.

“Moderately. I see through Addy’s eyes now but so, I suspect, does my grandmother Rawneth.”

Jame had noted that Shade had been restraining her changer tendencies ever since her own house had put her down the well. Perhaps that was safest, but it seemed like throttling a natural talent.

Kindrie had stopped by on his way back to Mount Alban and told her about Kenan’s presumed impersonation of Holly at Wilden. What a horrible time her poor cousin had had. Really, the three of them had to take better care of each other.

However, there was no longer any question in Jame’s mind where Shade had gotten her changer blood, and little where Kenan had gotten his. Did darkness come with it? Not intrinsically when innocently got, as far as Jame could tell. She was closer to the shadows herself due to her past behavior but also closer to their despised god thanks to her basic nature. On the whole, she felt herself to be more compromised than an innocent victim like Shade. The Randir, however, still seemed to have doubts.

Shade looked up. “Gari. When do the crown jewel-jaws migrate north?”

“Any day now. Why?”

The Randir only shrugged, but Jame could guess. Migrating with the “jaws” would be the Randir Heir Randiroc, whom Rawneth had been trying to assassinate for years. The Randir at the college loyal to the Witch would be watching for him. So, apparently, was Shade.

Classes continued. Jame got another black in swordsmanship, not unexpectedly, even though it came from a Jaran instructor. Then she and Brier both got whites after fighting each other to a draw at the Senethar in a match that took the entire class period and left both barely able to stand. Another white came into Jame’s hands for her skill with the scythe-arm. That made two of each, already a surprising number for any cadet but not an advantage in that they cancelled each other out.

Among her ten-command, Erim received a white for archery, no one apparently having yet realized that he could only hit inanimate objects. Niall also scored for field surgery after Killy pinned a randon to the ground with a lance through the leg, thus earning a black for himself. Jame suspected that Damson had rigged the accident since the plump cadet liked neither Killy nor that particular instructor. Moreover, she was fond of shy Niall, whose battlefield experience at the Cataracts was well known.

“How about you?” Jame asked Timmon when they crossed paths between lessons.

“A white for diplomacy,” he said proudly.

She laughed. As practiced at Tentir, diplomacy and debate were closely linked, with the hitch that one truly had to convince one’s opponent. “You’re a charmer. What could be easier?”

“Well, there is that. I hope to get another white for the Senetha, though. Shade has.”

Jame wasn’t surprised, given what she had seen of the Randir’s skills. She hoped she would also score in that discipline, but so far the class hadn’t appeared on her daily roster.

“And Gorbel?”

“A white for strategy, of all things.”

That didn’t surprise Jame either; people always underestimated the brain behind that bulging brow and sullen expression.

“Too bad they don’t test for hunting skills,” she said.

Timmon looked at her askance. “You want him to pass, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. I’m annoyed that he keeps avoiding me, but otherwise, for a Caineron, he isn’t half bad.”

“And me, for an Ardeth?”

“You’re shaping up into something interesting; and no, I don’t mean sexually.”

“Damn.”

The next time Jame’s ten was paired with Gorbel’s, it was for a race, starting at the swimming hole, ending on top of a cliff across the Burley.

“How you get there is up to you,” said the Coman randon in change.

The cadets looked at the cliff, which rose a good one hundred feet above the water. Some gulped and turned pale. Most turned and trotted downstream toward the bridge, meaning to cross and approach their goal the long way around, from its more accessible far side.

Jame eyed the cliff face. It was rife with slanting crevices and had an inviting ledge two-thirds of the way up.

“Well?” she said to Brier, who had stayed by her side as if waiting to see which way the cat jumped.

The Southron squinted up against the afternoon sun. Like most Kendar cadets, she suffered from height-sickness, but had nearly mastered it.

“I’m game if you are, Ten.”

“See here.” It was Gorbel who also, unnoticed, had stayed behind. “I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, do you, at long last? Then follow.”

Jame circled the swimming hole, darted out onto the spit that separated it from the Burley’s next level, and jumped from rock to rock across the rapids to the opposite bank. From this narrow, gravelly margin, she leaned back to judge her ascent, then unsheathed her claws.

The cliff face was most accommodating, offering many grips for hands and feet. It was a pleasure to climb. Halfway up she glanced down at Brier who was making steady if not quite as rapid progress.

“All right?”

The dark features turned up toward her, rigid with determination. “Just don’t fall on me.”

They reached the ledge and pulled themselves up onto it for a brief rest. The wind was sweet on their sweating faces, the cliff’s shadow cool. Swift water chuckled below. Downstream Perimal’s Cauldron rumbled deep in its throat. Across treetops and New Tentir’s outer wall, they could see the roof of their barracks.

“Nice place for a picnic,” Jame said.

Brier grunted and closed her eyes.

They opened again at a rattle of stones below. A pallid, sweaty face scowling with concentration glared up at them. Gorbel had climbed halfway to the ledge and was fumbling for a new grip.

“He really must want to talk to you,” said Brier.

“Go on when you’re ready. I’ll wait for him.”

After a moment, Brier rose to her feet and resumed her ascent. Jame leaned over the edge.

“To your right. Now reach up. Good. Not so good.”

Gorbel had stepped on loose shale and for a moment hung by his fingertips, feet scrabbling at the rock face. All the Caineron Jame had ever met were deathly afraid of heights.

“Come on. A few more feet. Now, reach for my hand.”

His weight nearly pulled her off the ledge, but after a fierce struggle she managed to haul him up.

“Now,” she said, panting, “what’s so urgent . . . that you had to follow me . . . up a sheer cliff?”

“Please.” He gulped and leaned back, looking sick. As if with a life of their own, his hands still clung white-knuckled to the rock slab on which he sat. “There’s no privacy at the college, and I was running out of time.”

“Ancestors preserve us. For what?”

“To warn you. If I don’t challenge you to armed combat before the end of the school year, my father is going to disown me.”

“Oh,” said Jame. This was bad, much worse than simply being replaced as Caineron Lordan. “Would the randon let you graduate without a house?”

“I’m not inclined to find out.”

“So we fight. Huh. Maybe I should have let you fall.”

“That wouldn’t help: Fash would be glad to take my place. By the way, the challenge includes all the Tentir Highborn cadets of both houses.”

Jame counted on her fingers. “That’s one against . . . five?”

“Eight. My command doesn’t include all the Caineron Highborn. Speaking of the randon, if you pass, Father has also threatened to demote the Commandant and reassign him so far into the hinterlands that it will take him a month’s hard ride just to get there.”

“The randon would allow that?”

“In house, they have no say. Worst of all, though, Father can strike at Sheth’s nephews and nieces in the service, some of them Bear’s children.”

“All this to stop me from graduating Tentir? Thal’s balls, I won’t even be a fully collared randon until I’ve spent two years in the field.”

Gorbel snorted. “Father has finally grasped that you aren’t easy to stop. The same may have occurred to your brother.”

“Still, to threaten innocents . . .”

“I know. It won’t make Father popular with the Randon Council, but then he never has been.”

They both contemplated Caldane’s little tests by which he established the loyalty and ambition of his officer core, pushing hard against the bounds of Honor’s Paradox.

“Hey!” the randon officer called over the cliff’s grassy edge, from a cautious distance. “Are you two setting up house down there?”

Gorbel groaned and rose. “What did I say. No privacy. There is this, though: I can challenge you however I like. Well, it’s to mounted combat with your choice of weapon. Think about it.”

Jame did as she followed his agonizingly slow ascent the rest of the way to the top. Hmmm.

They found the two ten-commands waiting for them.

“Last up,” said the randon, and dropped a black pebble into Jame’s hand. She looked at it.

“Well?” the Coman demanded, with a note of challenge in his voice.

It was unfair. He was waiting for her to say so.

“Nothing, Ran.” She pocketed it.

III

That evening, though, after supper, Jame lined the black pebble up with its mates on the dining hall table and regarded them. Two white river rocks and three dark gray ones, all about an inch long and half an inch thick, all smoothed to perfect ovals. They might have been markers in a game of Gen; perhaps some had been. The game she played now, however, was much more serious.

“You should complain to the Commandant,” said Rue, scowling at them.

“Have I ever, about anything?”

The towheaded cadet wriggled, uncomfortable. “Well, no. And yet . . .”

“And yet I shouldn’t have to.” Jame tapped the latest black stone with a fingertip, saw that she had extended a claw, and retracted it. “The Coman knew that I held back to make sure Gorbel didn’t fall. He can’t have thought I deserved this. So where is honor here?”

Brier deposited three mugs of cider on the table and swung a long leg over the bench to join them.

“We aren’t tested for one lesson alone but for all,” she said, “and for each randon’s opinion as to our general fitness. Did you think, lady, that you’d won all of them over?”

“Well, no. Given who they are and what I am, that would be impossible, but still . . .”

“But still you hoped that you had.”

Jame considered this. Maybe she was naïve. Where honor was concerned, did she see it as black and white as these pebbles on the table before her? But then they were actually natural shades of gray. Wasn’t she herself similarly shaded, caught between Perimal Darkling and her own Three-Faced God? Yes and no. If her own honor were compromised, surely she would know it. Thanks to Tori, she hadn’t yet personally faced Honor’s Paradox. Perhaps neither had the Coman randon. If he didn’t think she was fit to be an officer, it was his duty to say so; and he had, however unfair the pretext.

“You think it’s all politics,” she said to Brier.

The Southron shrugged and drank. As a former Caineron, ancestors knew she had seen more than her share of unfair dealings between Highborn and Kendar.

“Yes,” said Rue, “but would the Commandant see it that way?”

Black stone, white stone, touchstone.

Jame considered Rue’s faith. Did she share it even as Sheth confronted his own crisis of Honor’s Paradox with his brother?

Even then,
she thought, regarding Brier Iron-thorn’s stoic, teak-dark face and Rue’s flushed, rebellious one.
Especially then.

IV

During these last days, Jame had her last lesson with Bear.

As usual, she was pulled aside after assembly and instructed, almost furtively, to report to the Pit. Surely secrecy was no longer required, she thought as she made her way deep into Old Tentir. The other cadets were already aware that she took lessons from the former monster of the maze, and everyone knew about her claws.

It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had considered them such dreadful secrets. Jame extended her nails through the slit tips of her gloves and flexed them. Click, click, click. Ah, how good that felt.